Italian Unification: Nationalism, Risorgimento, and Key Figures
Nationalism and the Italian Nation
Nationalism was based on the exaltation of feeling which unites man with a particular geographic area to form a nation. The nation would be formed by a group of free and equal persons united by a common language, culture, and the desire to live together. Nationalism and socialism were the most powerful political forces in the 19th century.
After 1815, at the Congress of Vienna, Italy was divided into several different states:
- In the north, the kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, which had been occupied by the French during the revolution, had an important industry and a liberal bourgeoisie. It was a monarchy in the hands of the House of Savoy.
- The Lombard-Venetian kingdom was annexed to the Austrian empire.
- In the center, the duchies of Parma, Modena, and Tuscany were independent but under the domination and influence of Austria. The Papal States were governed by the Pope and opposed to the diffusion and expansion of liberal principles.
- In the south, the kingdom of Naples and Sicily was in the hands of the Bourbons, who maintained an absolute monarchy.
Italian Unification: The Risorgimento
Italian Unification: After Napoleonic rule, a movement called the Risorgimento began. It was a cultural movement fueled by liberal intellectuals, writers, historians, and musicians. During the revolutions of 1830 and especially 1848, this movement manifested with great force and defended national feeling and the desire for unity of the Italian peninsula.
The feeling of resistance against Austria and the desire to drive its dominators out allowed the strengthening of the bourgeoisie. Businessmen and dealers saw political unity as the solution to better develop their businesses, and the economic activity of the northern states of the kingdom of Piedmont essentially became the engine for the nationalist movement.
Italians agreed on unification but not on how to achieve it. There were different projects:
- One defended by the most conservative proponents of a confederation of states headed by the Pope (Pius IX).
- Another, championed by Giuseppe Mazzini, an Italian revolutionary who starred with his followers in the first outbreaks of nationalist movements, supported a democratic republic.
- The theory advocated by the ruling House of Savoy in the state of Piedmont-Sardinia, led by Cavour, the 1st minister of the kingdom of Piedmont with the support of the bourgeoisie, proposed a constitutional monarchy.
The kingdom of Piedmont counted on military aid and international support for the process of unification.
Their king since 1848 was Victor Emmanuel II, with the help of his minister Cavour (an extraordinary politician) and the support of the Italian people. Stages directed the process:
- In 1858, there was the interview between Napoleon III and Cavour. France promised its support against Austria.
- In 1859, Lombardy and Piedmont were incorporated into Italy. The troops of Napoleon III defeated the Austrian army at the battles of Magenta and Solferino. Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria signed the Treaty of Zurich, giving Lombardy to the kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia.
- (1860-1861) The duchies of central Italy (Parma, Modena, and Tuscany) overthrew their absolutist regimes and voted for annexation to the kingdom of Piedmont. Garibaldi’s expedition to Sicily, supported by the red shirts and the popular uprising, overthrew the Bourbon kingdom of Naples and Sicily. Through a referendum in 1861, the kingdom of Naples voted for unification with the kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia to form the young Italian state.
- In 1861, the 1st Italian national parliament met in Turin and proclaimed King Victor Emmanuel II of the new state. European powers recognized the new state, which did not yet include Venice and the Papal States.
- In 1866, Venice was incorporated into the new state after the defeat of Austria in the war with Prussia, in which Italians participated supporting Prussia.
- In 1870, the withdrawal of French troops because they had to go to the Franco-Prussian war consequently led to the occupation of Rome by the Italian army, and Rome was declared the capital of the new state.
Consequences of Italian Unification
Consequences of Italian unification: The political system of the new Italy was a parliamentary monarchy.