What if the Napoleonic Wars had gone differently?

A decade of continental war spreads French law, nationalism and the metric system by force.

If it had gone differently: Nationalism stays a fringe idea; the map of Europe keeps its little principalities for another century.

1. 1815The Congress of Vienna, No concert of powers forms; 19th-century Europe lurches from war to war with nothing holding the peace.
2. 1820Latin American independence, Spain's American empire holds; the idea that a colony can simply declare itself a nation loses its second great proof.
3. 1848The Revolutions of 1848, The demands for constitutions and nations are never even rehearsed; the old monarchies feel no pressure to bend.
4. 1871German unification, Central Europe stays a cluster of middle powers; the balance that broke in 1914 never assembles.
5. 1914The First World War, The old European empires are never shattered; the century's borders, grievances and revolutions all run another way.