Italian Unification

Podcast Transcript

Italy as we know it today is a relatively recent invention.

Ever since the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the Italian Peninsula had been a patchwork of city-states, dutchies, kingdoms, and lands controlled by the pope.

It wasn’t until the 19th century that a group of idealistic Italians sought to unify the Italian Peninsula and all its Italian-speaking people.

Learn more about the Risorgimento, or the 19th-century Unification of Italy, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Many people aren’t aware that, despite its ancient history, Italy as a country is rather new. To this extent, Italy was a lot like Germany. It was divided between multiple smaller states, all sharing a somewhat common language and culture.

Like Germany, Italy underwent a unification movement in the 19th century. The circumstances that brought about unification differed in each country, but they were both part of the same general trends that swept through Europe.

Italy was unified during the Roman Republic when Rome conquered other neighboring peoples on the Italian Peninsula. When the Roman Empire fell in 476, the Italian Peninsula remained unified under the Ostrogothic Kingdom for almost another hundred years.

However, after 568, Italy was split between the Kingdom of Lombardy and the Byzantine Empire, and it remained fractured in various degrees until the 19th century.

There was a Kingdom of Italy that existed after the end of the Carolingian Empire and later became part of the Holy Roman Empire, but it was mostly ignored by its German Rulers, and it never covered all of Italy.

I am glossing over a lot of history here, but it roughly describes the status of Italian unification or the lack thereof.

Modern Italian unification, which the Italians call Risorgimento, began in the early 19th century during the Napoleonic wars.

Napoleon invaded Italy and managed to consolidate all its various subdivisions into just two. The Kingdom of Italy, established in 1805, was in northern Italy and had Napoleon himself as its king.

The other was the Kingdom of Naples, established in 1806, and Napoleon’s brother Joseph Bonaparte was installed as king. When he became the King of Spain, he installed his brother-in-law.

Side note: Joseph Bonaparte was the same one who migrated to New Jersey and was the subject of a previous episode.

While Italy was technically divided between two kingdoms, for all practical purposes, it was unified as it was all under the direct or indirect control of Napoleon, who, you should remember, was born speaking Italian, not French.

This period of Italian unification had not been seen in over a thousand years, and it sparked something that hadn’t existed before: a sense of Italian nationalism. Prior to this, people thought of themselves as Florentines, Venetians, Genoans, Romans, Scilians, or one of several other groups.

After Napoleon was defeated in 1815, the European powers came together at the Congress of Vienna to create a new European order. They decided to return Italy to the status quo before Napoleon’s invasion.

Italy was thus divided as follows:

In the south was the large area, The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, covering southern Italy and Sicily. The Bourbon dynasty ruled it, which had been restored to power in Spain and France, and the first king of the restoration was Ferdinand I.

The next major state was the Kingdom of Sardinia, which included the island of Sardinia and parts of northwestern Italy in the Piedmont. It was ruled by the House of Savoy.

In the northeast was Lombardy-Venetia. This was under the direct control of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The Papal States was a central region of Italy under the direct rule of the Pope.

Finally, there was The Grand Duchy of Tuscany and other smaller duchies in central Italy, which were often heavily influenced by Austria.

The restoration of the old order by the Congress of Vienna might have reset the map, but it couldn’t stop the spark of nationalism that had been lit.

The odds were against Italian Unification if you consider that various segments of Italy were controlled or supported by Austria-Hungary, France, Spain, and the Pope.

One of the first groups which fought for unification was the Carbonari. They were a secret political group that filled the void when Freemasonry was banned in 1815. While their organization was similar to Freemasonry, they were committed to Italian independence.

Two of the movement’s early leaders were Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi.

Mazzini was a key intellectual and activist. He was the founder of the secret revolutionary society Young Italy which he founded in 1831. He promoted the idea of a united, republican Italy and inspired a generation of Italians with his writings and efforts, although his early attempts at revolution were unsuccessful.

Garibaldi was a charismatic military leader and ardent nationalist. Through his military campaigns, he played a crucial role in the unification process. He actually had to feel Italy for South America in 1834 after a failed rebellion. He remained in South America for fourteen years.

There were early revolts in 1820 in the Kingdom of Two Siclies and in 1821 in the Piedmont, but neither were successful.

The map of Italy first began to simplify in 1829 when the Dutchies of Parma and Modena began to expand, swallowing up several other nearby Dutchies. However, these newly enlarged Dutchies were still some of the smallest states in Italy.

In 1848, all of Europe was swept by revolution, and Italy was no exception. Uprisings occurred in several Italian states, driven by demands for constitutional government and independence from Austrian control. There were revolts that were temporarily successful in Venice and Milan.

The First Italian War of Independence was fought between the Kingdom of Sardinia and the Austrian Empire in 1848 and 1849. Austria eventually defeated Sardina, which resulted in the Sardinian King Charles Albert abdicating in favor of his son, Victor Emmanuel II. The war ended with Austria retaining control over Lombardy and Venetia, dashing hopes for Italian unification at that time.

In 1859, the Second Italian War of Independence broke out. The Prime Minister of Sardinia, Count Camillo di Cavour, realized that they needed outside help if they were to oust Austria, so they sought the aid of France.

The Second Italian War of Independence, also known as the Franco-Austrian War, resulted in an Austrian defeat and Sardinia annexing the Lombardy region.

Also in 1859, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Duchy of Parma, the Duchy of Modena, and several of the regions of the Papal States joined to form the United Provinces of Central Ital.

The United Provinces of Central Italy was short-lived. In 1860, plebiscites were held that ceded Nice and Savoy to France, and the United Provinces of Central Italy became part of the Kingdom of Sardinia.

At least in the north, the map of Italy was starting to take form.

Meanwhile, in the south, Garibaldi launched his famous Expedition of the Thousand. With a small force of volunteers, he landed in Sicily and rapidly conquered the island and the mainland, defeating the forces of the Bourbon Dynasty. By September 1860, Garibaldi had taken Naples and handed over his conquests to the King of Sardinia, Victor Emmanuel II.

Papal rule was very unpopular with the people who lived in the Papal States. With all the activity going on around Italy, there were numerous uprisings in the eastern Papal states.

In November 1860, Sardinia invaded and easily conquered the eastern two-thirds of the Papal States. This included Bologna, Ferrara, Umbria, Benevento and Pontecorvo.

On March 17, 1861, Victor Emmanuel II was crowned king of the new Kingdom of Italy. The new state included most of the Italian peninsula, except for the Veneto region (still under Austrian control) and the last remnants of the Papal States.

The Kingdom of Italy declared its capital to be Rome….which was a problem because it was the one major part of Italy that they didn’t control.

The Kingdom turned its attention first to the Veneto Region in the northeast.

In 1866, the Third Italian War of Independence was fought.

The war was a conflict between the Kingdom of Italy and the Austrian Empire and was part of the broader Austro-Prussian War.

The Italian military campaign against Austria was largely unsuccessful, suffering defeats at the Battle of Custoza on land and the Battle of Lissa at sea. Despite these setbacks, Italy benefited from Prussia’s decisive victory over Austria. As a result, under the 1866 Treaty of Vienna, Austria ceded the Veneto to France, which then transferred it to Italy, achieving a significant step toward the unification of Italy.

Almost all of the Italian Peninsula was now under the control of the Kingdom of Italy except for Rome and the region of Lazio surrounding it.

This was a difficult nut to crack primarily because the French were defending Rome on behalf of the Pope.

Garibaldi and his force of volunteers were defeated by the French defending Rome on November 3, 1867.

While Garibaldi was defeated, several uprisings took place within Rome. Rebel groups had attempted several times to seize control of Rome, but they all failed.

What eventually changed was the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. France needed everyone they could so they recalled all of their forces that were deployed in Rome in July.

That left Rome to be defended by a very small contingent of Papal forces.

Riots broke out all over Rome in support of becoming part of Italy. King Victor Emanuel waited until France had lost the Battle of Sedan to ensure they couldn’t come to the rescue.

The king tried to offer the Pope several ways out to save face, but Pope Pius IX refused everything. The king offered to send in troops under the guise of protecting the pope. He also offered to let the pope continue to rule over the part of Rome that was inside the Leonine Walls.

On September 20, forces of the Royal Italian Army entered Rome and annexed it to the Kingdom of Italy. The subsequent referendum in Rome and Lazio ratified the annexation.

At this point, almost everything on the Italian Peninsula had been unified under the Kingdom of Italy. The one exception was the small Republic of San Marino, which I covered in a previous episode. The reason why San Marino was spared was because they had previously offered sanctuary to Garibaldi.

The capture of Rome is usually considered to be the point when Italy was unified. However, it was not the end of the story.

With the loss of the Papal States and Rome, the pope considered himself to be a prisoner and refused to leave the walls of the Vatican so as not to acknowledge the rule of the Kingdom of Italy over Rome.

This wasn’t just a decision made by Pius IX. This was something that every single pope did for the next 59 years. Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, Benedict XIV, and Pius XI all never left the Vatican once they were elected Pope.

The stalemate ended in 1929 when Pius XI signed the Lateran Treaty with Benito Mussolini, who agreed to establish the Vatican City State as an independent country.

The map of Italy in 1870 was different from the map you will see today. There was one major part of today’s Italy that was not part of the Kingdom of Italy in 1870.

That is the region of Tyrol in northeast Italy, in the Alps. It is actually not an Italian-speaking region. Austria ceded it to Italy after the First World War.

In so far as Italy has remained a unified country, the Risorgimento appears to have been successful. This is especially impressive considering that they executed one ruler, Mussolini, and subsequently have had 70 different governments since the end of WWII.

There have been some minor separatist movements, in particular in South Tyrol and Lombardy, but they have had very little support.

The success of unification shouldn’t be too surprising, considering that Italian unification was an idea that was over 1500 years in the making.