If I recall correctly (based on what I read, if my memory is correct), during his trial, Gavrilo Princip, the Serbian nationalist who murdered Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo in June 1914, said that he wanted Serbia to become a Balkan version of Piedmont-Sardinia (the Italian city-state which unified Italy in the late 19th century) and to unite all of the South Slavs into one country and under one flag. In turn, this motivated me to ask this question: Which additional realistic cases of "Piedmong-style" national expanionism can you think of, both in real life and in alternate history?
In real life, we had:
-Piedmont-Sardinia serving as a nucleus for Italian unification
-Prussia serving as a nucleus for German unification
-(Farther back) Muscovy serving as a nucleus for Russian unification
-Serbia serving as a nucleus for Yugoslav unification
-Eastern Galicia sort-of serving as a nucleus for Ukrainian unification, at least in regards to spreading Ukrainian nationalism to other parts of Ukraine
-Wallachia and Moldavia serving as a nucleus for Romanian unification
Were there or could there have been any other cases of this? I'm excluding cases such as the US here because the territories west of the 13 Colonies were very sparsely populated other than for Native Americans back when the US acquired its independence.
In real life, we had:
-Piedmont-Sardinia serving as a nucleus for Italian unification
-Prussia serving as a nucleus for German unification
-(Farther back) Muscovy serving as a nucleus for Russian unification
-Serbia serving as a nucleus for Yugoslav unification
-Eastern Galicia sort-of serving as a nucleus for Ukrainian unification, at least in regards to spreading Ukrainian nationalism to other parts of Ukraine
-Wallachia and Moldavia serving as a nucleus for Romanian unification
Were there or could there have been any other cases of this? I'm excluding cases such as the US here because the territories west of the 13 Colonies were very sparsely populated other than for Native Americans back when the US acquired its independence.