ITALY

News of the 1789 agitations in France elicited predictably mixed reactions in Italy. Governments feared that the French example might be infectious, but there was considerable sympathy for the insurgents outside government circles. The demands of French insurgents in 1789 sounded familiar to many Italians. Reformers in the peninsula had also called for constitutions and representative assemblies and the abolition of feudal and clerical privileges. Sympathizers and opponents of reform were present at all social levels. Members of the nobility wanted to check the power of monarchs who attacked the "liberties" of their estate, the clergy was divided over questions of religious reform, the middle classes wanted easier access to careers and public offices, artisans and peasants chafed under the weight of high taxes, rising prices, and food shortages. It did not pass unnoticed that food rioters in Piedmont rallied to the cry of "Long live Paris, long live France." Revolution could not break out in Italy, which was divided into many states and under the control of Austria since the end of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), but it was possible for revolution to occur in Italy if brought there by a power strong enough to challenge Austrian hegemony.

italy in 1789

Absolute monarchs had led the reform movement before 1789, with the more absolute leading the way. The Habsburgs were at the forefront as direct rulers of Lombardy, which as a family possession was an integral part of their empire. Empress Maria Theresa (r. 1740–1780) and her son Joseph II (r. 1780–1790) centralized the administration, carried out land censuses, improved the collection of taxes, curbed the privileges of clergy and nobility, and established a state bureaucracy based on merit and competence. The Grand Duchy of Tuscany ruled by Joseph's brother Peter Leopold (r. 1765–1790) carried out similar reforms, moved in the direction of free trade, and went so far as to dissolve the Tuscan army in order to devote more resources to domestic improvements.

The picture was mixed elsewhere in the peninsula. A branch of the Spanish Bourbons governed the Kingdom of Naples (renamed Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1816), the largest and most populous of the Italian states. Under Don Carlos (later Charles III of Spain, ruled Naples 1735–1759) and in the early years of the reign of his son Ferdinand I (r. 1759–1825), the southern kingdom enacted far-reaching reforms to rein in clergy and nobility and stimulate the economy. Bourbons also carried out reforms in the small Duchy of Parma in the north. The neighboring Duchy of Modena, ruled by the Este family, was cautious in matters of reform. In the Papal States, attempts at reform were halfhearted and ineffectual, but eighteenth-century Rome was notable for the artistic and literary works that it produced. The states least interested in reform were the republics of Venice, Genoa, and Lucca, which were dominated by their respective aristocracies. Progressive thinkers did not think much of republics before the French Revolution.

The Kingdom of Sardinia was a special case. It is often referred to as Piedmont-Sardinia because economically and politically it was centered on the mainland region of Piedmont. It also included the region of Savoy that was the birthplace of its ruling dynasty (House of Savoy), on the French side of the Alps. The reforms implemented by the House of Savoy improved the administration and the army. Piedmont-Sardinia was poised to take advantage of opportunities for territorial expansion in Italy. Its pursuit of territorial gains merged with the movement for national unification in the nineteenth century.

the french revolution and the napoleonic invasions

The French Revolution came to Italy in 1796 at the point of French bayonets. The delay and the manner of appearance are important. By 1796, the revolution had gone through several phases. During the Jacobin phase from 1792 to 1794, the monarchy was abolished, the king and queen of France executed, real and suspected enemies of the Revolution liquidated on a grand scale, and war had broken out. It was harder for many Italians to like the Revolution after it had revealed its more radical nature, and harder still in 1796 when it was brought to Italy by the half-starved soldiers of Napoleon I (r. 1804–1814/15), who motivated them with promises of glory and booty to be won in the rich plains of Lombardy. Still, in spite of the large-scale robberies and depredations, a significant number of Italians supported the French occupation. The most enthusiastic supporters were dubbed Jacobins. A minority of true believers, Italian Jacobins believed in the revolutionary ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity, and greeted the French as liberators. In the years 1796 to 1799, borders changed, republics replaced monarchies, privileges were abolished. Napoleon was not held back by religious scruples or reverence for history. The uncooperative Pope Pius VI (r. 1775–1799) was arrested and carted off to France, where he died. France annexed Savoy and Piedmont. The venerable Republic of Venice ceased to exist when Napoleon ceded it to Austria with the Treaty of Campo Formio (October 1797). That same year, Napoleon established the Cisalpine Republic in the Po Valley as a French client state. Renamed the Italian Republic in 1802, it was a concession to Italian pride. So was the adoption of the green, white, and red Italian tricolor as the flag of the republic, patterned on the flag of Revolutionary France. In 1797, Melchiorre Gioia (1767–1829) won a prize for an essay arguing that Italians would be happiest if united under a republican form of government.

The French presence in the north emboldened Italian Jacobins in Rome and Naples. The Roman Republic set up in 1798 proclaimed the end of the pope's temporal rule. Radical leaders formed the Parthenopean Republic in January 1799. During the six months of its existence, the Parthenopean Republic attacked feudal privileges, opposed the clergy, and favored secular education. It claimed to speak for the people, but the majority did not support it. Vincenzo Cuoco (1770–1823), in his essay Saggio storico sulla rivoluzione napoletana (1801), described the Jacobin revolution as "passive" because it disregarded the needs of the masses and attacked the traditional institutions of the kingdom to which the peasantry and urban poor were loyal. His criticism underscored the isolation of Jacobins. The revolutionary triennio of 1796–1799 ended when Napoleon's enemies took advantage of his absence in Egypt to overturn the French-inspired republics, and peasants and the urban poor turned against the Jacobins.

French power was restored when Napoleon staged another invasion and defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Marengo (14 June 1800). That date marks the beginning of the Napoleonic age, for by that time Napoleon's personal power was secure. The period of revolutionary experimentation was over. Napoleon was crowned emperor in 1804; a year later he assumed the title of king of Italy. The Italian Republic became the Kingdom of Italy, governed by Napoleon's adopted son Eugéne de Beauharnais (1781–1824). In 1805, about one-third of the Italian peninsula, including the regions of Piedmont, Liguria, and Tuscany, became part of France. In 1806, Napoleon's older brother Joseph Bonaparte (1768–1844) became king of Naples. Joachim Murat (1767–1815), Napoleon's swashbuckling brother-in-law, replaced Joseph in 1808. Murat's resistance to Napoleon's demands, his personal magnetism, and love of display won him considerable popularity in Naples, and a posthumous reputation, probably undeserved, as a champion of Italian independence. France annexed the Papal States in 1809, and in 1811 Napoleon conferred the title of king of Rome on his newborn son and heir to the imperial throne.

Italy contributed revenue and manpower to the French Empire. Taxation was heavy, and conscription in the Kingdom of Italy raised more than 200,000 soldiers for Napoleon's armies, more than any other satellite state. Napoleon regarded the southern provinces of the peninsula as more valuable for the revenue they could provide than as a source of cannon fodder, for he had a low opinion of the martial qualities of southerners. Sicily and Sardinia, protected by the British navy, were never part of Napoleon's empire. Napoleonic legislation abolished feudal obligations and restrictions on the sale and purchase of land, and introduced centralized administration on the French model; uniform civil, commercial, and penal codes; and uniform weights and measures. Military conquest simplified political borders. There were now three main territorial divisions in Italy. Piedmont, Liguria, Tuscany, Parma and Piacenza, Umbria, Latium, and the Illyrian provinces on the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea were integral parts of the French Empire. The Kingdom of Italy in the north and the Kingdom of Naples in the south were client states with limited autonomy.

The simplification of internal borders, adoption of uniform law codes, and military conscription are credited with preparing the ground for the Risorgimento, the movement for Italian independence and unity that developed in the nineteenth century. Uniform weights and measures, abolition of internal tariffs, land reform, secular education, and the revolutionary principle of the "career open to talent" were certainly part of the process of modernization that was also an aim of the Risorgimento. But the benefits were unevenly distributed. Careers benefited those who possessed the educational qualifications required to pursue them. Manufacturing gained in those regions that were part of France, but suffered where they were impeded by the protectionist provisions of Napoleon's Continental System. Taxes, military conscription, and anticlerical policies generated popular resistance and atrocities committed by both sides, especially in the south. The secret association of the Carboneria, destined to play a significant role in the early stages of the Risorgimento, was founded in Naples in 1807–1810, probably by Neapolitan officers disenchanted with Napoleonic rule.

the congress of vienna and the restoration (1815–1848)

The principal aim of the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815) that ended the Napoleonic Wars was to prevent the recurrence of war and revolution, which were blamed on the spirit of revolution emanating from France. Political boundaries were redesigned to surround France with larger border-states as a first line of defense against a recurrence of French expansionism. That was the function of the newly established Kingdom of the Netherlands on France's northern border and of an enlarged Piedmont-Sardinia on the southern. Piedmont-Sardinia received the territory of the former Republic of Genoa, gaining an important port city and better access to the sea. King Victor Emmanuel I (r. 1802–1821) returned to the capital city of Turin eager to wipe out the vestiges of Jacobin rule, but he kept the centralized administration, improved collection of taxes, and better management of government finances that the French had introduced in his absence.

The Congress of Vienna acknowledged that policing Italy was Austria's responsibility. Austria added Venetia to Lombardy, the two regions forming the kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia within the Austrian Empire. To its credit, Austria sought to gain favor by encouraging its Italian client states to set an example of correct administration, be conciliatory toward former enemies, and win their cooperation. Pragmatic functionaries like Luigi de' Medici (1759–1830), chief adviser to King Ferdinand I of Naples, and Cardinal Ercole Consalvi (1757–1824), papal adviser and diplomat, followed the advice. Their efforts were stymied by the opposition of zelanti, die-hard conservatives opposed to all concessions. Ferdinand I of Naples and Pope Pius VII (r. 1800–1823) supported reform, but were ultimately held back by reliance on conservative support and by fear of revolution. Conciliatory policies worked best in Lombardy-Venetia, Parma, and Tuscany, the states with the closest ties to the Habsburg dynasty.

Few could blame Austrian Chancellor Prince Clemens von Metternich (1773–1859) for ignoring demands for Italian independence in 1815. But the sense of Italian nationality did exist in the minds of educated Italians brought up on the works of Dante (1265–1321) and Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), and on memories of past Italian greatness and power. The poet Vittorio Alfieri (1749–1803) called on fellow Italians to reject all forms of servility and assert their national dignity. His hatred of Napoleonic France expressed the primitive form of patriotism that thrives on resentment of things foreign. The tradition of literary patriotism lived on in the writings of Ugo Foscolo (1778–1827), who directed his barbs against both Napoleon and Austria. Literature became a weapon in the hands of Romantic writers of the next generation. Alessandro Manzoni's novel I promessi sposi (1827; The Betrothed) expressed faith in the redeeming power of religion and the common people. Its popularity helped to establish Tuscan

as the literary language of educated Italians. The novels of Massimo d'Azeglio (1798–1866), a future prime minister of Piedmont, catered to national pride by portraying the military valor of Italians in earlier times.

When revolution spread across the Mediterranean region in the years 1820 and 1821, insurgents in Naples and Piedmont demanded Italian independence and constitutional government. Secret societies carried revolution across political borders, relying on a network of cells that drew in military officers, public servants, students, journalists, lawyers, and artisans. Greece won its independence from the Ottoman Empire after a protracted struggle with English help. No such help was available to the Italian insurgents, who after winning some preliminary concessions were put down by Austrian intervention. Besides Austrian intervention, the failure was also attributed to popular apathy, the secret nature of the societies that limited their reach to the initiated few, and the insurgents' naive trust in the willingness of monarchs to grant reforms.

The limitations of secret societies were well understood by Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872), a young Genoese patriot who joined the Carboneria in 1827. Impatient with the hocus-pocus rituals of the society and eager for action, he struck out in a new direction. Young Italy, the association that he founded in 1831, did not keep its program secret and recruited far and wide. It declared open war on monarchy, proclaimed its republicanism, called for national independence and unity, armed insurrection, and claimed to speak for the Italian people. Mazzini believed in the power of the printed word and used it effectively to spread his message among educated Italians.

Young Italy could not deliver a successful revolution. It was penetrated by spies, wracked by internal dissent, and crippled by police surveillance. But failure did not discourage Mazzini. When Young Italy's attempts at revolution in Italy failed in 1833 and 1834, Mazzini raised the stakes by founding Young Europe, which was intended to create a united revolutionary front across Europe. Italians, Germans, Hungarians, Poles, and southern Slavs were to unite in an alliance of the people against Metternich's alliance of monarchs. Internal dissent hampered Young Europe without diminishing its appeal. Its call was heard by a young Sardinian naval officer named Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–1882) in political exile in South America. The future liberator of southern Italy honed his military skills in obscure South American conflicts, in which he fought with youthful self-confidence in the name of liberty.

Governments breathed a sigh of relief after the failure of Young Italy. Now that the danger of revolution was over, some thought that they could try their hand at cautious reform. Piedmont-Sardinia had a new monarch in the person of Charles Albert (r. 1831–1849). As enigmatic a figure as any that was ever in the public eye, Charles Albert had connived with insurgents in 1821 when he was in line to occupy the throne, then had made amends by leading conservative forces against liberal insurgents in Spain. His ambiguous conduct earned him the nicknames of the Sphinx and King Waffle. He thought that he could fight the revolution with reforms compatible with the principle of absolute monarchy. In the late 1830s he instituted an advisory council of state, abolished internal tolls and feudal obligations, adopted uniform law codes, negotiated trade treaties, promoted maritime trade, and built up the navy and merchant marine. Charles Albert was no liberal, but he set the kingdom on the path of cautious reform that would later make the Kingdom of Sardinia the darling of Italian liberals. He was also a thorn in Austria's side, for he was as interested as any of his forebears in enlarging his domain at Austria's expense by pursuing the "policy of the artichoke," whereby Piedmont-Sardinia was to gobble up the rest of Italy one leaf at a time.

Italian society did not stand still during the Restoration period (1815–1848). Governments built roads and ports, encouraged trade, subsidized industries, and encouraged the pursuit of "useful knowledge." The first Italian railroad was inaugurated in Naples in 1839. The Rothschilds made Naples the center of their Mediterranean operations. The Papal States under Gregory XVI (r. 1831–1846) discouraged secular education, rejected freedom of expression, laissez-faire economics, and industrialization. Uneven development, rather than stagnation, best characterizes Italy during the Restoration.

Most cities were stagnant, but there were exceptions. Milan, Turin, and seaports like Trieste and Livorno were thriving centers of commerce and manufacturing. Agriculture was by far the most important sector of the economy. The well-irrigated lands of the Po Valley moved toward specialized, market-oriented production and use of wage labor. Growing dependence on maize caused outbreaks of pellagra due to spoiled supplies. In central Italy, the form of sharecropping known as mezzadria prevailed. It was labor intensive, aimed at maximum self-sufficiency, and discouraged recourse to markets. But it provided security of income for landlords and of tenure for tenants, as land contracts were of long duration. Absentee-owned latifundia estates provided precarious employment for a growing rural population in the south, setting the stage for mass emigration. Vagabondage and brigandage were recurring problems in many parts of Italy. Recent historical interpretations stress that it was the inability of papal and Bourbon governments to provide security that aroused discontent with their rule and sustained the movement for national unification under the energetic leadership of Piedmont-Sardinia.

The struggle for national unification developed in new directions in the 1840s. The publication in 1843 of Vincenzo Gioberti's Del primato morale e civile degli italiani (On the moral and civil primacy of the Italian people) inspired the Neo-Guelph movement that called on Rome and the papacy to take up the cause of Italian independence. The Neo-Guelphs aimed at a loose confederation of states under the presidency of the pope, and believed that such an outcome could be attained without recourse to violence and revolution. It seemed highly unlikely

that the ultraconservative Gregory XVI would lead a national crusade, but history played one of its curious tricks when the College of Cardinals elected a pope with liberal credentials in 1846. The election of Pius IX (r. 1846–1878) was the bolt of lightening that stunned Metternich and electrified liberals. To the liberals' acclaim, the new pope announced reforms that included amnesty for political prisoners, institution of a civic guard, a council of ministers, and a free press.

the revolutions of 1848

Revolution came to Italy and the rest of Europe in 1848. Poor harvests, heavy taxation, anti-Austrian sentiments, and expectations that the pope would lead the fight for independence proved to be an explosive mixture. In January 1848 there were popular protests in Lombardy, Tuscany, and Sicily. Sicilian insurgents seized control of the capital city of Palermo, called for a regional parliament, decreed an end to Bourbon rule over the island, adopted the Italian tricolor, and sought to gain autonomous status for the island under the Piedmontese rule. With unrest spreading to the rest of the realm, Ferdinand II of Naples (r. 1830–1859) promised a constitution. Within a month, Leopold II of Tuscany (r. 1824–1859), Pius IX, and Charles Albert followed suit.

Lombardy became the epicenter of revolution when insurgents took to the streets of Milan and compelled Austrian troops to evacuate the city after five days of fighting. The Five Days of Milan entered the history books as a victory for the people. Charles Albert took advantage of Austria's disarray after Metternich was removed from office to declare war on Austria. His proclamation of 23 March 1848 promised that he would bring Italians under Austrian rule "the help that a brother expects from a brother, a friend from a friend." In the euphoria of the moment and under pressure from liberals, the governments of Naples and Rome also dispatched troops to fight the Austrians. They soon recalled them because neither Ferdinand II nor Pius IX was eager to fight Austria, and both realized that it was not in their interest to have a larger and more powerful Piedmont as their neighbor. They need not have worried, for the Austrians recovered and defeated the Piedmontese, compelling Charles Albert to sue for an armistice on 8 August 1848. The conflict remembered as Italy's first war of national independence would end for good on 23 March 1849 at the Battle of Novara, when the Austrians inflicted a second and decisive defeat on the Piedmontese.

Insurgencies were still under way in Venice, Florence, Rome, and Naples. The most dramatic was the one in Rome, where insurgents assassinated the pope's prime minister. Pius IX had tried to cope with the forces he had helped unleash by appointing a prime minister. Pellegrino Rossi (1787–1848), a political exile of 1820, was a law expert, university professor, economist, and diplomat. He believed in reform, but not in revolution, and wanted nothing to do with popular assemblies and the mob. Pius IX left Rome in disguise a few days after Rossi's murder on 15 November 1848, leaving the city in the hands of radical elements who called for popular elections, proclaimed a republic, and declared the pope deposed as a temporal ruler.

Mazzini and Garibaldi were the dominant figures of the Roman Republic of 1849. Both had returned from exile to participate in the revolution, Garibaldi sailing from South America with a small retinue of followers. Mazzini saw the Roman Republic as the starting point of worldwide revolution. As the Rome of the Caesars had given the world the Pax Romana, and the Rome of the Popes had brought Christianity, the Rome of the People would inaugurate the age of democratic government. Pius IX regarded what was happening in Rome as the usurpation of legitimate papal power and called on the governments of Europe to protect the church. Austria, France, Spain, and Naples responded with troops. Garibaldi took charge of defending the city and the republic. His volunteer troops conducted a gallant defense, but eventually had to yield to superior numbers, equipment, and training. Garibaldi's defense of the Roman Republic became the stuff of legend. Mazzini boasted that republicans had shown the greatest resolve and given the cause of Italian unity a roster of martyrs that would inspire patriots for generations to come. Ordinary people participated for the first time in elections, joined political circles, and took a stand on public issues. The memory of grassroots participation may have been the most important legacy of the Roman Republic.

the politics of national independence (1849–1859)

It was not understood right away that there would be no repeat of revolution after 1848. Mazzini continued to plan unsuccessful insurgencies that alienated many sympathizers. By the mid-1850s, the political initiative that he craved passed to public figures that had their hands on the levers of power, controlled the resources of government, and approached the question of Italian independence with fewer preconceptions. Moderate liberals looked to Piedmont-Sardinia and its young king Victor Emmanuel II (r. 1849–1878), who succeeded to the throne following the resignation of his father Charles Albert. Piedmont-Sardinia was the only Italian state that retained the constitution granted in 1848, which provided for an elective lower house of parliament and protected civil liberties and freedom of association. It would pass on this constitution to the Kingdom of Italy formed in 1861, and it would remain the fundamental law of the land until 1946 when Italians voted the monarchy out of existence.

Victor Emmanuel II gave an impression of bluntness and sincerity that contrasted favorably with his father's ambiguous image. His followers seized upon these genuine qualities to portray him as Re Galantuomo (Trustworthy King), a monarch who could relate to simple folks. But the man of the hour was Count Cavour (Camillo Benso, 1810–1861), who served as Victor Emmanuel II's prime minister from November 1852 until his death with only one brief interruption. Cavour believed in constitutional monarchy, parliamentary government, civil liberties, limited voting rights, and free trade, the distinctive traits of nineteenth-century liberals who trusted neither absolute monarchs nor the people at large. His admirers insisted on his fundamental liberalism; his detractors insisted on its limitations and his propensity to sacrifice liberal principles to political expediency. Another image, entirely posthumous, portrayed him as a patient weaver (il tessitore) working on a secret plan to unify Italy. That last image was the least credible of all.

Cavour was far from being universally popular. In the democratic camp where republican sentiments prevailed, many regarded him as a mere servant of a royal dynasty, and therefore not a true patriot. But not all democrats were intransigent republicans. After the experiences of 1848 and more years of exile, Garibaldi was willing to come to terms with the Piedmontese monarchy if it would put its army and resources in the service of the national cause. He distrusted Cavour, but believed in Victor Emmanuel II—like a peasant in awe of authority, acidly said Mazzini, whose unrequited wish was to have Garibaldi on his side against the king. Unlike Mazzini who still believed that small-scale uprisings could trigger a general revolution, Garibaldi understood that untrained fighters were no match for regular troops. He would fight with his volunteer troops, which he trained to maneuver quickly and use shock tactics, but the Piedmontese army would have to be involved if Italy was to be unified, and that army was loyal to the king. The Italian National Society, founded in August 1857, served as a bridge between Garibaldi and Cavour, republicans and monarchists, liberals and democrats. It announced its commitment to "Italy and Victor Emmanuel," operated openly in Piedmont-Sardinia and secretly elsewhere in Italy, engaged in political propaganda, and stashed weapons for a showdown with Austria. It served the monarchy, but also pressured the monarchy to work with the volunteer movement that represented the spontaneous and democratic element of the national movement.

It was Cavour's task to prepare for war. He is often compared to Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898), for they were the principal architects of political unification in Italy and Germany respectively. They were Realpolitik figures, meaning that they relied on military power and diplomacy to pursue their objectives, distrusted popular initiatives, and put ideals in the service of politics rather than vice versa. Both relied on diplomacy and war, but Cavour had the difficult task of finding a partner or partners that would lend military help against Austria, for the Piedmontese army was not strong enough to go at it alone. Bismarck, who had at his disposal the far more powerful Prussian army, used diplomacy to isolate his enemies one at a time. Cavour admired England, but England was an unlikely military partner. He therefore set his eyes on France and its new emperor Napoleon III (r. 1852–1871), who had joined the Carboneria in his youth, favored Italian independence, was eager to emulate the military feats of his uncle Napoleon I, challenge Austrian hegemony, and return Italy to France's sphere of influence. Piedmont's participation in the Crimean War (1853–1856) on the side of England and France was intended to end Piedmont's diplomatic isolation and embarrass the Austrian government, which opted out of that conflict. The payoff came in the form of a secret deal that Cavour and the French emperor worked out near the French resort town of Plombières in July 1858. The agreement of Plombières promised France the territories of Nice and Savoy in return for French military intervention in a war against Austria and a rearrangement of borders and dynasties within Italy that would be advantageous for both France and Piedmont-Sardinia. An enlarged Piedmont-Sardinia would be the strongest power in Italy, but not strong enough to pose a threat to France, which with its victory would replace Austria as the hegemonic Continental power.

the war of 1859, garibaldi's thousand, and unification

Cavour's diplomacy made possible the War of 1859, which Italians remember as their second war of independence. The war was decided by the two bloody battles of Magenta and Solferino fought in June 1859. They were Austrian losses, but the Austrian army was still in Lombardy when Napoleon III and Austrian Emperor Francis Joseph I (r. 1848–1916) signed a surprise armistice on 5 July. The conflict was supposed to continue until the Austrians were evicted from Lombardy and Venetia, which were then to go to Piedmont. Piedmont would then cede Nice and Savoy to France.

In the event, Piedmont had to be satisfied with Lombardy, and France did not get Nice and Savoy. The outcome was disappointing for Cavour, who resigned as prime minister and was out of office for six months, but Austria's defeat set in motion a chain of unforeseen events that eventually gave Piedmont-Sardinia much more than Cavour had bargained for. Emboldened patriots in Tuscany, Parma, Modena, and the northern provinces of the papal Romagna staged coups, set up provisional governments, and demanded annexation to Piedmont-Sardinia. An uprising in Sicily enticed Garibaldi to launch an expedition to the island with volunteers. The legendary Expedition of the Thousand sailed from the town of Quarto near Genoa in May 1860 officially ignored by the Piedmontese government. Cavour did not approve, but did not dare stop the enormously popular Garibaldi, who had the king's secret blessing. Stopping Garibaldi might have given Cavour's political rivals enough leverage to bring down his government.

Garibaldi's victories in the south brought the national unification movement to near completion. Sicily, the entire southern mainland, and a large swath of papal territory fell into the hands of Piedmont-Sardinia, which intervened militarily in the final stages of the operation to mop up the last vestiges of resistance. The Kingdom of Italy was officially proclaimed on 17 March 1861. Excluded from its territory were Rome and its surrounding territory, which were what was left of the Papal States, and the Austrian possessions in the north. Venetia, the provinces of Trent and Trieste, and the Istrian peninsula remained under Austrian control. Italy gained Venetia in 1866 after fighting another war against Austria, this time as Prussia's ally (the third war of national independence to Italians, Seven Weeks' War to the rest of the world). Rome became the capital of Italy in September 1870 when Italian troops moved in over the token resistance of the papal army. Italy gained Trent, Trieste, and Istria when the Austrian Empire disintegrated at the end of World War I. Italy's final confrontation with Austria was a fourth war of national independence.

Italy faced a new set of problems after unification. It was a country of 21.8 million people, which grew to 26.8 million in 1871 with the acquisition of Rome and Venice. Most of its population was illiterate and poor. The economy was agricultural, with a weak manufacturing sector and enormous regional disparities, the most glaring being the gap between north and south. Only about 2 percent of the people spoke the Tuscan national language; the use of regional dialects and local vernaculars was the norm everywhere. Seven previously separate states, each with its own government, laws, budgets, police, and army had to be merged into a single national entity. How to integrate these diverse populations and institutions was the pressing issue of the moment. Democrats urged that it be done by summoning a representative national assembly to discuss and legislate. The government chose instead the speedier, more direct approach of extending the laws and administrative practices of Piedmont-Sardinia to the rest of the country. It was perhaps a sensible decision given the uncertainties of the moment and the fear that a unity so quickly achieved could be undone by protracted political wrangling. Sensible or not, it altered the perception of the national movement. The decision to "Piedmontize" the entire country, the first of many controversial government decisions, smacked of conquest rather than liberation.

Popular discontent was most pronounced in the southern regions, where bands of irregular fighters, promptly dubbed "brigands" by the government, took up arms against the state. Southern "brigandage" persisted for nearly a decade, required the deployment of some 120,000 troops, placing parts of the south under martial law, and cost the army more casualties than all the wars of independence combined. Brigandage was the first manifestation of the Southern Question, a question that still troubles national politics at the start of the twenty-first century. Mass emigration developed on a large scale in the 1880s and 1890s. It was heavily southern and had many causes, including the attraction of new economic opportunities in the Americas. That was the pull. On the push side were developments attributable directly or indirectly to national unification. Southern manufacturing could not compete with manufacturing in the north when deprived of the protective tariffs that sustained it before unification. Southern agriculture experienced a similar crisis, although its crisis was due more to competition from foreign producers and to unwise tariff policies adopted by the national government. Compensating shifts of production toward crop specialization occurred but did not improve the conditions of most land workers. Political repression also played a role, as indicated by the upsurge in Sicilian emigration after the island experienced the imposition of martial law in 1893–1894 to quell the disturbances of the fasci siciliani, triggered by economic and political grievances.

Troubled relations of church and state were also a persistent problem. The loss of Rome in 1870 put an end to papal temporal rule. Locked in the tiny enclave of the Vatican, Pius IX proclaimed himself a prisoner, denounced the loss of territory as an act of thievery, refused to recognize the Italian state, and urged Catholics to boycott it. The confrontation with the Italian state set papal policy against the sins of modern civilization that Pius IX denounced in the Syllabus of Errors (1864). These included rationalism, free thought, religious freedom, secular education, socialism, Protestantism, and the separation of church and state. Generations of Italian Catholics faced the dilemma of choosing between the authority of the church, which exhorted them to boycott national politics, and the state that demanded primary allegiance. The conflict of church and state ended with the signing of the Concordat and Lateran Pact in 1929. Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) and the Fascist regime in power at that time touted the settlement as one of their great achievements, one that certainly contributed to the overwhelming endorsement of the regime by the vast majority of Italians in the national plebiscite that was held later that year.

italy after cavour (1861–1876)

Cavour died prematurely and unexpectedly in June 1861. His death left a huge political void, for there was no obvious successor of comparable political skill and prestige to take on the challenge of governing the country so recently unified. His political heirs made up a loose political formation called the Historical Right. They were mostly northern politicians, sincere patriots, and competent administrators who wanted to govern responsibly and did not fear unpopularity. They saw it as their duty to put government finances on a sound footing, enforce the law, and promote economic growth. They wanted a balanced budget, financial stability, and investor confidence. They spent carefully and taxed reluctantly, but spend and tax they did because the needs were many. Building railroads to bind together the different regions, improving public education, fighting the second war of independence (1866), and repressing brigandage were top priorities. They believed that spreading the tax burden around so that it affected even the poorest was a good thing, because paying taxes gave everyone a stake in the system and made for responsible citizens. The most unpopular tax of all was the grist tax (macinato) levied on milling operations. When that tax went into effect in 1869, large-scale riots broke out and the army had to be called out to restore order. The most typical figure of the Historical Right was Quintino Sella (1827–1884), who held the post of finance minister off and on during the period when the Historical Right controlled parliament. He embodied the politica della lesina (policy of tight spending) that brought about the Historical Right's crowning achievement. On 16 March 1876, the government announced its first budget surplus; two days later it lost a key vote and had to resign. The heirs of Cavour would never regain power.

Their successors are known collectively as the Liberal Left, to distinguish them from the socialist left that developed during their watch. Many were former Mazzinians who had made their peace with the monarchy. They saw themselves as a progressive force, promised to reduce taxes, broaden the suffrage, take a strong stand against clerical power, and pursue a more active foreign policy. Unlike the Historical Right, the Liberal Left had a strong constituency in the south. They abolished the hated grist tax (1880), expanded the suffrage from 2 percent to 7 percent of the population (1882), ratcheted up the anticlerical campaign, and ended Italy's diplomatic isolation by concluding the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria (1882). The first decisive step toward colonial expansion occurred that same year when the government established the colony of Eritrea on the coast of the Red Sea. Not particularly concerned with balancing the budget, the Liberal Left spent merrily, particularly to build up a large navy, which they deemed indispensable if Italy was to be a great power.

the crisis of liberalism (1876–1901)

The dominant figures of the Liberal Left were Agostino Depretis (1813–1887), who served three times as prime minister from 1876 until his death in office in 1887, and Francesco Crispi (1818–1901), a Sicilian and the first southerner to hold the office of prime minister, which he did in 1887–1891 and 1893–1896. Depretis, an adroit politician, conjured up parliamentary majorities by bargaining with anyone willing to deal. He practiced the art of trasformismo (transformism), which according to his critics sacrificed principles to political expediency. Such accommodating politics stirred opposition within the Liberal Left, which was a loose and fractious grouping rather than a real political party. Crispi posed as the "man of destiny" who would restore integrity to the political process and win for Italy the international status to which it was entitled. He enacted many timely reforms in his first years in office, improving the functioning of the courts, extending the right to vote in local elections, introducing programs of public sanitation, and laws for the protection of emigrants. Foreign policy proved to be Crispi's undoing. His career ended in humiliation and disaster when an Italian expeditionary force, marching from Eritrea into Ethiopia to enforce a territorial claim, was surrounded and destroyed at the battle of Adwa (March 1896). The ensuing furor at home forced Crispi to resign as prime minister and injected into Italian politics the explosive issue of revenge, which ultranationalists used to inflame public opinion against weak liberal government and fascists raised to justify other colonial ventures.

In the five years of political and social turmoil that followed Crispi's resignation, the country experienced frequent changes of government, widespread popular tumults, an attempt by conservatives to expand the powers of the crown at the expense of parliament, and a parliamentary revolt to protect parliament's prerogatives. The 1890s saw the growth of a militant socialist movement that championed the rights of workers and peasants. The Italian Socialist Party, founded in stages from 1892 to 1895, was the first real political party on the Italian scene, but party discipline was constantly tested by internal tensions. It tried to accommodate both reformists who believed in the power of the ballot, working with parliament, and gradual evolution toward a socialist society, and revolutionaries who preached the violent overthrow of capitalism and the government.

Conservatives of all stripes regarded socialism as a major threat, and their fear of revolution intensified when the country experienced protests and mass demonstrations on an unprecedented scale. During the fatti di maggio of May 1898, tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets, riots ensued, martial law was declared, and the government arrested leaders of the opposition. The army opened up with artillery on demonstrators in Milan, inflicting hundreds of casualties. A self-appointed avenger of the people emerged in the person of one Gaetano Bresci (1869–1901). A Tuscan anarchist and worker in the textile mills of Paterson, New Jersey, Bresci held the king responsible for the massacre, returned to Italy, and shot King Umberto I (r. 1878–1900), son and successor to Victor Emmanuel II, dead on 29 July 1900.

The impression was enormous; many feared that the country was slipping into anarchy. That it did not do so was largely due to the parliamentary majority, which beat back the efforts of strict constitutionalists to curtail its powers, and then managed to produce liberal coalitions that steered the country away from the brink of all-out crisis. The reign of the new king began auspiciously. Victor Emmanuel III (r. 1900–1946), later fatally compromised by his association with the Fascist regime, was eager to disassociate himself from the repressive measures of previous governments and disinclined to interfere with the workings of parliament. He was willing to work with a new leadership that transcended the passions and diatribes rooted in the history of the Risorgimento.

the liberalism of giovanni giolitti (1901–1914)

Thus began the era of Giovanni Giolitti (1842–1928), a new-generation politician who had risen through the public administration, had a thorough understanding of the machinery of government, and was willing to deal with liberals, socialists, and Catholic members of parliament. It helped that he had no personal connection with partisan passions of Risorgimento politics. Giolitti, a liberal, won the support of socialists by playing on their fears of conservatives and of conservatives by playing on their fears of socialists. He could exploit the freedom of action that comes from occupying the political middle ground.

The "age of Giolittian democracy" extends from 1901, when Giolitti was minister of the interior in a government headed by the liberal Giuseppe Zanardelli (1826–1903), who was old and ailing, to 1914 when he stepped out of office. Between those two dates Giolitti was prime minister three times, in 1903–1905, 1906–1909, and 1911–1914. But in or out of office, few doubted that he was the real political power that could get things done. Observers opined that he stepped out of power tactically to avoid bearing the brunt of some particularly odious measures, putting that onus on the victims of his political realism. Critics called him a corruptor of the political process. Giolitti respected parliament, but getting cooperative parliamentary majorities required influencing the vote in ways that were not above board. Electoral fraud or sleight-of-hand was not unusual, especially in the south, where Giolitti's lieutenants felt that they could operate without close scrutiny by the press. The south was a huge reservoir of votes for Giolittian candidates, to the chagrin of his enemies who dubbed him il ministro della mala vita (minister of the racketeers). Giolitti's defense was that government had to deal with people as they are: a hunchback requires a crooked coat.

Giolitti's parliaments spanned the spectrum from Catholics (who now had a special papal dispensation to vote against anticlerical and socialist candidates), to liberals, and socialists. His policies were flexible enough to encompass the whole spectrum and offer something to everyone who was willing to cooperate. As difficult as it is to assess the principles and motivations of this slippery

figure, there is no doubt that his politics produced fundamental breakthroughs that took Italy into the age of popular participation in government and public life. He established the practice of government neutrality in labor conflict and recognized the right of workers to organize for purposes of collective bargaining (a law long on the books, but frequently disregarded) as long as their activities did not threaten the public order. The country's most powerful labor union, the General Confederation of Labor, was founded in 1906. He steered through parliament the electoral reform bill of 1912 that gave the vote to most males (women could vote in local elections, but had to wait until 1946 to vote in national elections). That measure expanded the electorate from 3 million to 8.5 million voters and marked the beginning of the era of mass politics. Giolitti regarded the new electoral law as his political masterpiece and crowning achievement.

Giolitti had a low opinion of the military (he once remarked that Italy had won in World War I because the other side also had generals) and did not approve of military ventures. Nevertheless, he did bring the country to war in 1911. His reasons for doing so are still the subject of debate, but certainly the acquiescence of the Great Powers, pressure of special interests at home, weakness of the opponent, and desire to appease nationalist sentiments played a role. The enemy was the Ottoman Empire, long considered the "sick man of Europe," and therefore ripe for the plucking. There was Catholic support for war against a Muslim power. Middle-class Italians, appalled and humiliated by the emigration of millions of their poor compatriots, welcomed a place where Italy's surplus population could settle under the national flag. A small but vehement nationalist movement called for an act of force to erase the humiliating memory of 1896.

The Italian-Turkish War, fought from September 1911 to October 1912, gained Italy the colony of Libya and a foothold in North Africa. Nationalists called it Italy's "Fourth Shore" because of Libya's closeness to Sicily, and envisaged further expansion. Giolitti had no desire to go further, but the elections of 1913, the first held on the basis of the greatly expanded suffrage, yielded such a slight government majority that in March 1914 he stepped down to wait for a better day. It seemed a wise move at the time. His successor, the conservative southerner Antonio Salandra (1853–1931), had to quell outbreaks of domestic violence in June 1914 even more disruptive than those of 1898. During Red Week (7–14 June 1914), anarchist, republican, and socialist agitators took over local administrations in central and northern Italy, declared independent republics in the seized territories, issued currencies, abolished taxes, interrupted railway traffic, and ransacked wealthy homes. Once again, the country appeared to be on the brink of revolution or civil war. Among the ringleaders were the socialists Mussolini and Pietro Nenni (1891–1980), whose paths would later diverge in very different directions.

the decision to go to war (1914–1915)

The outbreak of war in Europe in August 1914 kept Salandra's government in power far longer than expected. Salandra and his foreign minister Antonino Paternò Castello, marquis di San Giuliano (1852–1914) adopted a policy of watchful neutrality. Claiming that the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary was defensive in nature and that its partners had ignored the obligation to consult adequately with Italy before going to war, the government demanded assurances of territorial compensations before making a decision. But Italy's territorial demands centered on the cities of Trento and Trieste, which the Austrians were understandably reluctant to give up. France and Great Britain (less so Russia) had no such qualms and promised them freely. Salandra's government actually negotiated with both sides, but in a lopsided fashion, for while it promised Austria no more than continued Italian neutrality for the territories it wanted, it promised the Triple Entente powers intervention on their side in return for the territories of Trent and the Trentino region, Trieste and the Istrian peninsula, Dalmatia, a sphere of influence in the Balkans, and colonial compensations. Salandra invoked "sacred egoism" as the patriotic rationale for the hard bargain that he and Sidney Sonnino (1847–1922), San Giuliano's successor at the foreign ministry, sealed in the secret Pact of London, signed on 26 April 1915.

A contentious domestic debate developed. While the government negotiated with both sides, Italians lined up in opposing camps for or against intervention. Most Catholics, socialists, and liberals favored neutrality, particularly because the Austrian government seemed willing to make territorial concessions just to keep Italy out of the war. Giolitti expressed the view that Italy could gain much by remaining neutral. Pope Benedict XV (r. 1914–1922) favored nonintervention and condemned the secret negotiations with the Entente powers. Socialists denounced the war as a capitalist plot, but a dissenting minority led by Mussolini called for intervention on the grounds that war would hasten the outbreak of proletarian revolution. That happened in Russia, but not in Italy. Mussolini's prediction came true, however, in an unexpected way, when he worked on the resentments and hopes aroused by the war to bring on a fascist revolution in 1919–1922.

Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary on 23 May 1915. The Pact of London did not oblige Italy to declare war on Germany, but it did so on 28 August 1916 to fall in line with its partners. Parliament was not consulted in either case, for the constitution gave the crown the exclusive right to make war and peace. Although excluded from the decision, parliament rallied behind the government and the war effort in the spirit of patriotism. The Socialist Party did not, but its formula to "neither support nor sabotage" the war satisfied neither neutralists nor interventionists, the latter accusing it of obstructing the war effort and undermining troop morale. The divide between neutralists and interventionists that formed in 1914 and 1915 and hardened during the war was never bridged. It surfaced in the immediate postwar years as the basic point of contention between socialists and fascists, the latter claiming to speak for what Mussolini called the trincerocrazia (aristocracy of the trenches) and for all patriotic Italians. Intervention and war thus cast a long and tragic shadow over the course of Italian history.

See alsoCarbonari; Cavour, Count (Camillo Benso); Charles Albert; Crispi, Francesco; Garibaldi, Giuseppe; Giolitti, Giovanni; Kingdom of the Two Sicilies; Papal State; Piedmont-Savoy; Pius IX; Umberto I; Victor Emmanuel II.

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Roland Sarti