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Kleinstaaterei, a German word for 'the occurrence of (many) petty states' is a polyvalent term, mainly used for the internal state of Germany (and neighbouring regions) during the Holy Roman Empire, especially in its late phase, when it was officially known as Heiliges Römisches Reich Deutscher Nation.
History
Unlike most European states, especially France, the Neuzeit's tendency to political concentration failed within the Holy Roman Empire to produce any truly coherent imperial state. On the contrary, the hundreds of (mostly minor, even tiny) principalities - mainly resulting from successive dynastic splits, sometimes reflected in compound names such as Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha - were the ones to modernise their military, judicial, and economic administrations, which were virtually non-existent at the imperial level, which thus was little more than a feudalistic confederal figurehead without political or military clout, and which during the religious wars fundamentally split between Catholic and Protestant dynasties.
After French Emperor Napoleon I toppled the Empire in 1806, Kleinstaaterei was not eliminated - he shortly imposed a relative concentration into over two dozen states in the Confederation of the Rhine, Bonaparte's hegemonic vehicle that didn't survive his military defeat, and the victorious allies (including Prussia and Austria, the only major German powers, neither part of that Rheinbund) decided at the Vienna Congress (1814-1815) on massive dynastic restorations, be it with some exceptions and compensations for some redrawing of the map, resulting in an only modestly more concentrated edition of the pre-Napoleontic Kleinstaaterei.
The rise in all Europe of Nationalism in the sense of striving for a 'nation-state' governing an entire (ethno-cultural) people, had to make progressive forces insist an a unified Germany, reflected in the pejorative use of the word "Kleinstaaterei". It was one of the central demands of the March 1848 revolutions, but the ruling houses still managed to resist then.
Only Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck's policy to gradually construct a politically real German Empire under the Prussian royal house of Hohenzolern would in 1871 end Kleinstaaterei (except in some peripheral regions, e.g. Luxemburg, Liechtenstein) in favor of a 'strictly German' Nationalstaat (without Austria(-Hungary), the Habsburg empire), putting Germany back on the map as a major European power (be it too late to became a major colonial power).
On the positive side, the decentralised nature of the Kleinstaaterei did contribute to cultural diversity within Germany, and the numerous, rivaling courts, though usually politically insignificant, often aspired some notoriety trough mecenate- e.g., who outside Germany would ever have known (Sachen-Anhalt-)Köthen without the duke's patronage to J.S. Bach ?.
- By analogy "Kleinstaaterei" equally applies to similar cases, especially, until its Risorgimento (reunification as a kingdom 1861-1870), to the Italian peninsula, where many partially republican city states of widely varying sizes coexisted with numerous, often petty, monarchies. The term applies even though in time several regions had seen significant concentrations resulting in a few major powers which were stronger than their size suggested, as their power came from being among Europe's richest states, including the Papal States in the centre, the dogal Venetian Republic, the duchy of Milan in roughly the present Lombardy region, Piedmont-Sardinia (which would achieve the unification from its Turin-based home territories), and the largest, the Neapolitan Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
See also
Sources and references
"Kleinstaaterei"