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Italy Part 6 - Italian Unification

The unification of Italy was the result of efforts by Italian nationalists and monarchists loyal to the House of Savoy to unite the Italian peninsula under one state. General Giuseppe Garibaldi led campaigns in the 1860s to liberate southern Italy and Sicily from Spanish rule, allowing the Kingdom of Sardinia to declare a united Italian kingdom in 1861. Further territorial gains followed Italian victories over Austria in the 1860s and France's abandonment of Rome in 1870, though Italy was not fully unified until the end of World War I in 1918 when it annexed additional former Austrian and Ottoman lands.

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96 views3 pages

Italy Part 6 - Italian Unification

The unification of Italy was the result of efforts by Italian nationalists and monarchists loyal to the House of Savoy to unite the Italian peninsula under one state. General Giuseppe Garibaldi led campaigns in the 1860s to liberate southern Italy and Sicily from Spanish rule, allowing the Kingdom of Sardinia to declare a united Italian kingdom in 1861. Further territorial gains followed Italian victories over Austria in the 1860s and France's abandonment of Rome in 1870, though Italy was not fully unified until the end of World War I in 1918 when it annexed additional former Austrian and Ottoman lands.

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misko dj
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Italian unification

Victor Emmanuel meets Giuseppe Garibaldi near Teano.

The Altare della Patria in Rome,resting place of the Unknown Soldier. More than 650,000 Italian soldiers died
on the battlefields of World War I.

The birth of the Kingdom of Italy was the result of efforts by


Italian nationalists and monarchists loyal to the House of Savoy to
establish a united kingdom encompassing the entire Italian
Peninsula. In the context of the 1848 liberal revolutions that
swept through Europe, an unsuccessful war was declared on
Austria. The Kingdom of Sardinia again attacked the Austrian
Empire in the Second Italian War of Independence of 1859, with
the aid of France, resulting in liberating Lombardy.

In 186061, general Giuseppe Garibaldi led the drive for


unification in Naples and Sicily, allowing the Sardinian
government led by the Count of Cavour to declare a united Italian
kingdom on 17 March 1861. In 1866, Victor Emmanuel II allied
with Prussia during the Austro-Prussian War, waging the Third
Italian War of Independence which allowed Italy to annex Venetia.
Finally, as France during the disastrous Franco-Prussian War of
1870 abandoned its garrisons in Rome, the Italians rushed to fill
the power gap by taking over the Papal States.

The Piedmontese Albertine Statute of 1848, extended to the


whole Kingdom of Italy in 1861, provided for basic freedoms, but
electoral laws excluded the non-propertied and uneducated
classes from voting. The government of the new kingdom took
place in a framework of parliamentary constitutional monarchy
dominated by liberal forces. In 1913, male universal suffrage was
adopted. As Northern Italy quickly industrialised, the South and
rural areas of North remained underdeveloped and
overpopulated, forcing millions of people to migrate abroad, while
the Italian Socialist Party constantly increased in strength,
challenging the traditional liberal and conservative establishment.
Starting from the last two decades of the 19th century, Italy
developed into a colonial power by forcing Somalia, Eritrea and
later Libya and the Dodecanese under its rule.

Italy, nominally allied with the German Empire and the Empire of
Austria-Hungary in the Triple Alliance, in 1915 joined the Allies
into the war with a promise of substantial territorial gains, that
included western Inner Carniola, former Austrian Littoral, Dalmatia
as well as parts of the Ottoman Empire. The war was initially
inconclusive, as the Italian army get struck in a long attrition war
in the Alps, making little progress and suffering very heavy losses.
Eventually, in October 1918, the Italians launched a massive
offensive, culminating in the victory of Vittorio Veneto. The Italian
victory marked the end of the war on the Italian Front, secured
the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and was chiefly
instrumental in ending the First World War less than two weeks
later.

During the war, more than 650,000 Italian soldiers and as many
civilians died and the kingdom went to the brink of bankruptcy.
Under the Peace Treaties of Saint-Germain, Rapallo and Rome,
Italy obtained most of the promised territories, but not Dalmatia
(except Zara), allowing nationalists to define the victory as
"mutilated". Moreover, Italy annexed the Hungarian harbour of
Fiume, that was not part of territories promised at London but had
been occupied after the end of the war by Gabriele D'Annunzio.

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