Carving up France. Part of Kohr's map of "Little States"

Having seen the end results of two world wars, Austrian political scientist and a philosopher Leopold Kohr wrote in his 1957 book "The Breakdown of Nations":

There seems to be only one cause behind all forms of social misery: bigness. Oversimplified as this may seem, we shall find the idea more easily acceptable if we consider that bigness, or oversize, is really much more than just a social problem. It appears to be the one and only problem permeating all creation. Whenever something is wrong, something is too big. [...]

The problem is not to grow but to stop growing; the answer: not union but division. A small-state world would not only solve the problems of social brutality and war; it would solve the problems of oppression and tyranny. It would solve all problems arising from power.

Kohr probably realised that dividing Europe into rectangular, US-style states would clash with the ‘tribal’ makeup of the Old Continent’s culturally diverse peoples. So he modified that idea to propose a European federation of ’little states’: still too small to cause harm, but more in line with Europe’s ethnic composition.

In his map France falls apart into Aquitaine, Brittany, Normandy, Isle de France, Alsace-Lorraine, Burgundy, Languedoc, the Midi and Corsica.

Kohr's idea has remained Utopian, with one exception. After a bloody war, the Balkans have been carved up into ethnic components, but the rest of Europe has only become "bigger".

View full map | Leopold Kohr (wiki)