Which country has been more influential towards the development of historical and modern Europe? France or Germany?

France is dragging everyone in.

Germany has influenced Europe in very negative ways. Very dramatic ways sure, but negatively.
France has influenced Europe less dramatically but in more of a mixed way.
Germany has influenced (or at least affected) Europe more, France has influenced less awfully. Then again, you could arguably blame Germany's negative influence on France's earlier influence on Germany. Perhaps, if it wasn't for Napoleon, there wouldn't be the Germany, and the Europe, that we have today.

France is at least partly responsible for the creation and rise of both the USA and Germany. Germany is at least largely responsible for the absolute continent-ruining fuckery of the 20th century. So, essentially, Germany has had the larger direct influence, France has had the larger indirect influence.

The 6 countries that created the EU in 1957:
France
Germany
Belgium
Luxemburg
Netherlands
Italy

Netherlands through birthing Karel de Grote shaped Europe

France shaped moden Europe in many ways, but was eventually overtaken by Germany in that regard.

Italy

This is the correct answer

France by far lol, unless "modern Europe" means "since 1990"

Napoleone was italian

>France by far lol
how so?

Rivalty between those two made Europe, there's no greater influencer than the other, one wouldn't have done anything without the other.

>most populous country in Europe by far before the 19th century
>thus, cultural dominance over Europe for several centuries, etc.
>older capitalism
>first modern nation-state (Germany was very late to the party, and just began to be a state when France conquered its colonial empire)
>French Revolution (this fact alone should be enough)
>immigration lol

The only positive points for Germany compared to France are:
>Luther
>the contemporary situation where you have the edge (although not an enormous one) in terms of population and industry

Yep, we passed the torch.
Unfortunately, you failed to destroy the eternal *Nglo as much as we did

Maybe we will succeed together in the this century.

>Rivalty between those two made Europe
You mean between France and England?

>>most populous country in Europe by far before the 19th century
Russia

>>thus, cultural dominance over Europe for several centuries, etc.
worthless biased opinion

>>older capitalism
Italy and Low Countries

>>first modern nation-state
England and Poland disagree

This.
Simply because we were to stupid to form a real cunt for way to long. Imagine the HRE as an actual working state. Could have changed the whole history of mankind.

What had England ever to do with the mainland? Other than binding a lot of ressources of France and Spain in the navies.

The debate is between Germany and France only lol

Also, France was more populous than Russia (and anyone else except India and China) until the very end of the 18th century / beginning of the 19th

>The only positive points for Germany compared to France are:
The printing press
The Romantic period of art and literature
Programmable computers
Newspapers (if you want to roll this into the printing press, fine)
Rifling
Quantum mechanics
Marxism
Fahrenheit (of course I'm biased, but...)
Gasoline and diesel engines

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_inventions_and_discoveries

I only glanced through and picked out the ones that were most influential in human history, but there's quite a lot more, and probably a lot that I missed. Germany has invented a lot more than what you probably assume. Me too, as I didn't know they invented the paper coffee filter. I just made a pot of coffee using one so... thanks De*tsch

>napoleonic law
There you have it.

>Other than binding a lot of ressources of France and Spain in the navies.
It must have been so awful for France and Spain to have navies, what with all of the colonies they founded in the Americas, Indochina, and Africa with them :^)

Industrial revolution, lots of amusing wars, etc.

>The only positive points for Germany compared to France are:
>Luther
>the contemporary situation where you have the edge (although not an enormous one) in terms of population and industry
what about the HRE, the Habsburgs, their influence in Italy and the Balkans, the control they took over Spain and with that even more parts of the world, the German nobility in eastern Europe, the printing press, the Hansa influence in northern Europe and the Baltic, Karl Marx and his ideas, Prussia, Bismarck, the Kaiserreich, Nazism?

>but there's quite a lot more, and probably a lot that I missed.

Quite, yeah...
Just some others from my mind:
>yets
>rockets (also first manmade object to leave earth)
>phone
>Röntgen
>cars
>motorcycles
>also the last of the 3 engines (Otto/Diesel/Wankel)
>Aspirin

Just because we didn't try to conquer territory on the continent, doesn't mean we were irrelevant.

>Luther
>positive

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>Industrial revolution
Ok, I will give them that.

>lots of amusing wars
On mainland Europe? Especially compared to France and Germany?
They were pretty good at slaughtering 3rd worlders, but away from that...

Many of those aren't exclusively German inventions/accomplishments, and many others were made by Jews (rather than ethnic Germans).

Individual German achievements and inventions are not "Germany" per se, and did not shape Europe specifically

I could write down a list of French achievements too (photography and antibiotics lol) but that's irrelevant

name on of the inventions he listed that was done by a Jew

It's thanks to Luther that Europe isn't a 21st century equivalent of Sunni-Shiite shithole Islam to be honest. The 30 Years War was awful, but it's over and done with. This lead to separation of church and state, which is a core founding principle of my country as a result.

Meanwhile in the modern day Muslim chimps kill each other over who the line of successors to Muhammad is, just like the petty reasons European Christians utilized up until the 17th century

Are we going to argue that cars and phones did not shape Europe? Hell, the telegraph (not necessary German, just an example) decided the Crimean War and the American Civil War. Technology is human history

>I could write down a list of French achievements too (photography and antibiotics lol)
And yes, both of those are clearly important.

>It must have been so awful for France and Spain to have navies, what with all of the colonies they founded in the Americas, Indochina, and Africa with them :^)

Well, in the long run...

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Germany.
France is destroying Europe since the revolution.

you know that protestants were the equivalent of ISIS back then right?

no they weren't, you're full of shit.

>were

Luther obviously didn't intend for secularism. You're clutching at straws here.

yes they were. That's why the Counter-reformation was so harsh, before protestantism the Catholic Church was rather chill

France was the driving force much longer. Germany had it's moments as it started unifying.

>Are we going to argue that cars and phones did not shape Europe?
I won't, especially considering that the former is a French invention: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas-Joseph_Cugnot

umm, no, they weren't. And the counter reformation was so harsh because papist cucks feared for their influence

European colonial borders largely ruined the middle east and guaranteed some sort of major cultural war (ala ISIS) at some point. The West should have just let ISIS destroy "moderate" Islamic countries to spur a reason to reform, just like Luther and the Catholic Church. Maybe, if the Muslim world had the bloodshed seen in the 30 Years War, they would arrive at the same conclusion we did ~400 years ago regarding separation of church and state.

The basis of Luther's philosophy was a personal relationship with religion, one without authority. This naturally means leaving the "authority" bit to the secular government, the whole "render upon Caesar what is Caesar's" or however it goes. So yes, Luther was incredibly secular for being a religious icon. If Catholics fought any other kind of schism, the result may have been incredibly different at the table of Westphalia

>The vehicle was reported to have been very unstable owing to poor weight distribution, a serious disadvantage for a vehicle intended to be able to traverse rough terrain and climb steep hills. In addition, boiler performance was also particularly poor, even by the standards of the day. The vehicle's fire needed to be relit, and its steam raised again, every quarter of an hour or so, which considerably reduced its overall speed and distance.
>After running a small number of trials, variously described as being between Paris and Vincennes and at Meudon, the project was abandoned.
Sounds incredibly useful

Still a car :)

lol

But almost nothing remains of all this (even Marxism!), it's like talking about French influence in Russia in 1780, the invention of the hot air balloon, or Louis XIV. It's too dead to be considered relevant in hindsight. But I retained Luther for Germany, because the protestant-catholic divide remains significant today, at least culturally.

I think the old French influence is more visible today (Napoleonic code, human rights, all the French vocabulary in English, all the nations apeing our modern-style Republic and even our flag, etc.), but Germany is very significant of course.

>lots of amusing wars
>On mainland Europe?
The Hundred Years War and the rivalry with Napoleon were pretty epic desu

>Are we going to argue that cars and phones did not shape Europe?
It shaped the entire world, not just Europe (and the debate is about "the development of historical and modern Europe").

Also, I'm not sure Germany would win against France in the "outstanding achievements that changed the world" category. They're probably very close to us (and we're both behind England) though.

Israel

>100 years' war
two french families fighting each other while innocent anglo-saxon and french civilians pay the price
>napoleonic wars
britain was mostly paying armies to fight us

really I hate how even french people have an anglocentric view of history, our nation split from the same empire as germany and then we spent the rest of our history fighting it, yet nowadays they're just our funny neighbors from the other side of the rhine to many of you, while britain is le epic rival

the reformation, the German nation state founded by Prussia, Marx's socialism and social democracy aren't visible today?
>human rights, all the French vocabulary in English, all the nations apeing our modern-style Republic and even our flag
and it's not like these are purely French achievements, human rights were proclaimed by the English bill of rights, the US constitution, even German peasants demanded human rights before the French revolution: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Articles
tho of course in mainland Europe the French revolution was very significant
and France wasn't the first modern Republic either, and neither is the tricolore a French thing: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Republic
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince's_Flag

France, the Netherlands, UK, Austria, Italy, Greece

Any other answer is wrong.

With France being the most influential.

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Articles
Thanks for this. I'm writing a peasant revolt into a script for a late medieval tech level fantasy video game, and this is incredibly useful (to rip off)

>russia
Could you care to look things up befor talking out of your ass, my retarded terroni friend.

>spent the rest of our history fighting Germany
? lol

Also no one thinks Germany is our "funny neighbor" today (they're quite powerful), or that any kind of rivalry we still have with England is relevant (rivalry in what? rugby?).

>Imagine the HRE as an actual working state
Where do you think France came from :^)

Luther was the Christian equivalent of a wahhabist lol

ur dad's a terrone

No one invented anything ex nihilo, I could downplay literally every German achievement in the same way (Marx did not invent socialism and was quite influenced by French thinkers and French history, etc.)

You can keep on thinking everyone aped the Dutch flag or the Dutch republic, thinking "let's do it like the Dutchies in 1579!", though.

>No one invented anything ex nihilo
I didn't say that?
you were the one implying these things were all purely French achievements in the first place

Funny how letting these spats play out resulted in stability, instead of hegemonic or near-hegemonic powers (UK, France, USA, Russia) meddle in affairs and let it fester like gangrene

I've always held the opinion the middle east needs a giant war, the West needs a hands-off approach to it, and we just let them kill each other until one ideology/religion results. Or, more positively, they reach a stable agreement amongst themselves, similar to the Peace of Westphalia. If you let gangrene sit in your wound for too long, you're going to die.

>I've always held the opinion the middle east needs a giant war, the West needs a hands-off approach to it
not realistic in any way
far too much to lose, and if the west kept its hands off other global players would take sides, or one side would build nukes and it'd be a total shitshow with unimaginable loss of life

I think I often underestimate German achievements.

Because the changes we made in the Netherlands were more of a social, economic and ideological nature (besides a handful of important discoveries and inventions, like discovering bacteria), I always tend to judge other countries by our own achievements. And then I forget the industrial achievements of Germany.

>with unimaginable loss of life
so was the 30 Years War, it killed like 8 million people back when Europe only had 110 million

assuming nukes are only used on belligerent countries, and they aren't strong enough to affect the atmosphere, I couldn't care less about middle easterners nuking each other.

youtu.be/LLCF7vPanrY

we've collectively tested 2000+ nukes, above ground, below ground, and underwater, and the world hasn't ended from that

Greece

Spain. i just f*king love spain that's all.

interesting thought, but it's not gonna happen.

oh I definitely agree it's not going to happen, because US foreign policy is exactly on the opposite side of what I would like to happen. much like the British, we are deliberately letting the middle east become divided and rot itself to death simply so that they are not a regional competitor to our interests

this results in less stability and more terrorism, especially with saudis funding foreign (as in Europe and the Americas) mosques

The fact that Republics existed in the modern era before the French Republic (say, San Marino) doesn't make it less original or less influential

>Because the changes we made in the Netherlands were more of a social, economic and ideological nature (besides a handful of important discoveries and inventions, like discovering bacteria), I always tend to judge other countries by our own achievements.

Well, besides the all the tech/medicine and what not we also had stuff like
>first health insurance/social state (Bismarck)
>first social housing (Fugger)
>Communism (Marx/Engels)
>Frankfurt school
>Just a shitload of philosophers of all branches
>etc. etc.

i feeling like a brainlet after reading this thread. what books should i read to learn europe history.

turk on a proxy btw :D