German unification was blocked by intensely persistent state particularisms into the 1860s

Evidence

Between 1815 and 1866, Germany—the Deutscher Bund—consisted of 39 states or principalities (including the four free cities of Hamburg, Bremen, Lubeck, and Frankfurt). Even during the War of Liberation (1812–15), the particularisms of the German principalities had been persistent, causing Johann Friedrich Bohmer’s father to write to his son, the future historian, “Unhappily, those fighting for the great patriotic cause are not so much Germans as Bavarians, Wurttemberger, Hessians, Saxons, Nassauer, Wurzburger and even subjects of the petty state of Ysenburg.” Within the Bund (or League), Prussia emerged as the most powerful competitor to Austria on the basis of its army and its bureaucracy (a legacy of French rule). — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 321

Categorization

• XREF: This Germany of fragmented principalities that Marx and Engels confronted is the national context that shaped their views on nationalism, which the reader’s project on the Black radical tradition will contrast against.