ItalianHistory.info Foreign domination (1559 to 1814) Unification (1814 to 1861)

Foreign domination (1559 to 1814)

The history of Italy in the Early Modern period was characterized by foreign domination: Following the Italian Wars (1494 to 1559), Italy saw a long period of relative peace, first under P²] Spain (1559 to 1713) and then under Hapsburg Austria (1713 to 1796). During the Napoleonic era, Italy was a client state of the French Republic (1796 to 1814). The Congress of Vienna (1814) restored the situation of the late 18th century, which was however quickly overturned by the incipient movement of Italian unification.

Unification (1814 to 1861)

map of the unification of Italy

Napoleon reviewing his Italian troops. The Republic of Italy he formed in 1801 was changed to a kingdom.

The French Revolution and the brief Kingdom of Italy awakened hopes in Italy for an independent nation . The Congress of Vienna after Napoleon's downfall restored foreign rulers to Italy . From 1815 onward, many Italians began to work toward undoing the Congress of Vienna and national independence .

Giuseppe Garibaldi (1907-82), hero of the Risorgimento. Born in Nice, France, became a sea captain and sentenced to death for an abortive revolt against the Kingdom of the Piedmont in north Italy in 1834. He fled to South America and learned the art of guerrilla warfare fighting for the Republic of Rio Grande do Sul against the Brazilian Empire . In South America he adopted the red shirt of the gauchos symbol of Garibaldi and his followers and met the woman who would become his wife, Anita. He took command of an Uruguayan fleet in 1842 and raised an Italian legion in the Uruguayan civil war (1839-51He returned to Italy in 1848 with 60 members of his legion. After the roman republic was declared, he became the leader of an untrained defense force against a French expedition and the Neopolitan (Kingdom of the Two Sicilies) allies .He established a force of a thousand red shirts and took Sicily from the Neopolitian forces in 1860.and crossed to the mainland and forced the Neopolitan to flee from his capital. the last of the king's forces were defeated at Gaeta, freeing the southern part of Italy.He tried to take Rome, but was unsuccessful against the French expedition there at the Battle of Mentana in 1867.In 1870, he volunteered to fight for the French against the Prussians after Napoleon III was overthrown.He returned to Italy after the war and was elected a deputy of Rome .

After unification, many Italians were forced to emigrate as the population rose faster than the number of jobs in the new country.

The Risorgimento was the political and social process that unified different states of the Italian peninsula into the single nation of Italy. During the revolutions of 1848 , nationalist writer Ceare Balbo and Count Camilio Benso di Cavour of Turin pressed for a constitution in their newspaper Il Risorgimento . Cavour was the prime minister of Savoy who was to become the brains of the movement. revolutionary hero Giuseppe Garibaldi returned from South America and in 1860 seized Sicily and Naples from the Bourbons and handed them over to Savoy King Vittorio Emanuele II, who became the king of Italy in 1861.

Battle of the Volturno 1860, where Garibaldi won a victory against the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies

The Franco-Austrian War of 1859-61 led to the freeing up of Lombardy in northern Italy. A new Italian Kingdom was proclaimed. Tuscuny joined in 1861 and Venice was seized in 1866. Napoleon III had to pull his troops out of Rome in 1870 at the start of the Franco Prussian War, and Rome was taken in 1870. Italian unity was complete and the Italian parliament was moved from Florence to Rome. the new state saw violent swings between the conservatives and the socialists .The Vatican is now an independent enclave surrounded by Italy, as is San Marino.

Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero

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