Italian Unification
Overview
Statewide Dual Credit Modern World History: Unit 9, Lesson 3
A discussion of Italian unification in the 19th century, highlighting the roles of key figures such as Giuseppe Mazzini, Giuseppe Garibaldi, and Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour detailing the challenges faced by the Italian unification movement and the eventual success in unifying the Italian peninsula under the Kingdom of Italy.
Following the Napoleonic Wars, the delegates at the 1815 Congress of Vienna created a series of powerful alliances designed to maintain a balance of power by propping up traditional European empires. While such a system protected established nations it made it difficult for new ones to be formed. For instance, since the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century AD, the Italian peninsula had remained divided into a series of petty kingdoms, city-states and papal lands. Although constant conflict and trade between these small states provided the creative ferment that led to the rise of the Renaissance, it made any consensus for Italian nationalism hard to achieve.
The Italian Campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars destabilized the traditional Italian feudal order and introduced new ideas, such as nationalism. Attempts at Italian unity under the short-lived Cispadane Republic (1796-1797) were rolled back by Napoleon’s defeat and the efforts of the Congress of Vienna. Throughout the 1810s and 1820s, a secret order known as the Carbonari spearheaded a movement for Italian unification. One such member, Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872), established a movement known as La Giovine Italia (Young Italy) that trained a generation of future revolutionary leaders. Another Carbonaro, Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882), spent several years learning to function as a professional revolutionary by participating in armed struggles in Brazil and Uruguay.
Spotlight On | GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI
Born in 1808 in Nice, part of Napoleon’s French Empire, Giuseppe Garibaldi trained as a young man to become a ship captain. Joining the Carbonari and Mazzini’s Young Italy movement in 1833, Garibaldi participated in an unsuccessful uprising in Piedmont. Fleeing to the Americas, Garibaldi worked with revolutionaries seeking independence from Brazil. Marrying Brazilian revolutionary Ana Maria “Anita” de Jesus Ribeiro (1821-1849), Garibaldi learned guerilla warfare techniques. During the Uruguayan Civil War, Garibaldi raised a legion of Italian expatriates known as the Redshirts because of their distinctive uniforms that featured red shirts, ponchos and sombreros. Returning to Italy in 1848, Garibaldi played an active role in the Italian Wars for Independence. A dedicated republican, he disliked dealing with aristocrats like Camillo Benso, Count Cavour (1810-1861) and Victor Emmanuel II (1820-1878), whom he felt moved slowly toward independence. When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, the Union government offered Garibaldi a commission as a major general. Garibaldi met with U.S. Minister Henry S. Sanford (1823-1891) in Brussels to discuss the commission and express his strong anti-slavery sentiments. Accounts differ on how much power he expected over the Union forces, but ultimately, the Lincoln administration did not agree to his proposed involvement in the American Civil War.
In 1848, a series of liberal revolutions broke out across Europe. Popular uprisings quickly began in Sicily, Naples, Milan and Venice. Local nobles, including Pope Pius IX (1792-1878), promptly fled. Giuseppe Garibaldi led an army of peasants into Rome. In January 1849, revolutionaries held local elections of an assembly that declared the creation of the Italian Republic on February 9th. Two months later, Giuseppe Mazzini became Chief Minister of the new Italian government. He helped prepare a Constitution which guaranteed, among other things, freedom of religion and a right to free public education. However, the intervention of Austrian and French military forces led to a defeat of the republicans and a restoration of the Pope and nobles to power.
Throughout the 1850s, Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour and Sardinian Prime Minister, promoted Italian unification. He efficiently modernized Sardinia’s government and military and began creating correspondence networks with patriots throughout the Italian peninsula. In 1859, Count Cavour signed a secret alliance with French Emperor Louis Napoleon III to launch a resistance movement against Austrian forces in Milan and Venice. In June, Sardinian forces defeated Austrian troops at the battles of Magenta and Solferino. In the meantime, Garibaldi led an army of Italian volunteers to victory over the Austrians at the actions of Varese and Como. Behind the scenes, Sardinian, French and Austrian diplomats brokered a compromise whereby Sardinia would receive Lombardy, France gained Savoy and Nice, and Austria would maintain Venice.
The precarious peace created by the end of the conflict lasted less than a year. When peasants in Messina and Palermo began to revolt against the government of Francis II, King of the Two Sicilies (1836-1894), Garibaldi led an army of 1,000 volunteers from all over the Italian peninsula (I Mille) to liberate Sicily from Neapolitan rule. He then began an invasion of the Kingdom of Naples, defeating a papal army hastily thrown together by Pope Pius’s followers. Victor Emmanuel II, King of Sardinia, arrived to take the head of Garibaldi’s volunteer army. Francis II held out in the fortress of Gaeta for three months before finally surrendering. In February 1861, Victor Emmanuel II called for the creation of an Italian Parliament, which declared him King of Italy. Although Garibaldi attempted to raise an army to take Rome and create a republic, Victor Emmanuel II negotiated quietly behind the scenes for French and Austrian troops to leave the peninsula.
For nearly five years, the Kingdom of Italy continued to grow, wielding power throughout the peninsula except for Venice, which remained under Austrian control, and Rome, where the Papacy held sway. During the Austro-Prussian War (1866), Italy sided with Prussia against Austria. At war’s end, Italy received Venice with French support in return for accepting French control over Nice and Savoy.
When the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) broke out in 1870, Napoleon III recalled all French troops from Rome. After a token resistance, Rome fell to Victor Emmanuel’s army in October. The Kingdom of Italy annexed Rome, unifying the peninsula for the first time in over a millennium.