Besides the nations of France, England, Spain, Scotland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark which grew up directly from the large political communities of the middle ages, others have been founded in more recent times, some of them having only a single government, and being therefore called unitary states, and others having one government for some purposes and many governments for other purposes, and being known as federal states. Among the unitary or non-federal nations we must notice Brandenburg-Prussia 1700-1866, Italy since 1859, Belgium, Holland, Greece, and the Balkan States: among the federal nations the United States of America and modern Switzerland stand out conspicuously. The German Empire founded in 1871 is a federal nation, though it differs from other federal nations because Prussia, one of its component states, is larger than all the other component states put together: Austria Hungary was for centuries a mere heterogeneous empire, but in recent times its parts have been held together by the possession of common interests and not by force, so that it has acquired some of the characters of a federation, though it cannot be said that it has grown together into a single nation. But the making and consolidation of nations is not the only kind of state-building that has gone on since the end of the middle ages: for other sorts of construction have also been actively carried on, and they have resulted in the making of a number of states that are larger than nations. In some cases two European nations or a European nation and some other European population have been brought under a single government: in other cases a European nation has expanded by the foundation of colonies far away from its original abode: and yet again in some cases a European state has conquered a host of non-European peoples and formed them into a heterogeneous empire dependent on itself. The most conspicuous instances of the union of a nation with another nation or people occurred in 1683 when Alsace was acquired by France, in 1707 when England and Scotland placed themselves under one government, in 1771, 1793 and 1795 when parts of Poland were annexed to Prussia, and in 1801 when the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was formed. The enlarged states which result from such unions can never be strictly called single nations immediately after the union has taken place, and for a time at least after the union they must be denoted merely as unitary states: but usually they have not for most purposes differed very greatly from nations: for in all cases one of the two peoples united together has been a large and well consolidated nation and the other has been much smaller and far less perfectly organized: and consequently the larger partner in the union has had a predominant share in the government, and has gradually succeeded in communicating its own national characteristics and feelings to some part at least of the population of the lesser partner in the union.