Eli5: why does the country Liechtenstein exist? It’s an incredibly small country in Europe, why isn’t it just part of Switzerland or Austria?
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It’s a tiny country but it’s a sovereign country that falls under the slate of rights Europeans believed nations have starting with the days of the Concert of europe. The Concert of Europe was a failed system in many ways but it did enforce the idea that you had to have a better reason to annex another state than “I want that thing.”
Liechtenstein exists because it didn’t fall under the unifying ambitions o men like Bismarck and Metternich during the unification phase of european history. If Austria had won the brotther’s war perhaps Liechtenstein would have been absorbed into a German union of some kind but Prussia had no interest in them and they had no interest in joining a Prussian state..
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