Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Unification of Italy

Episode Date: August 24, 2024

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. Sponsors Sign up for ButcherBox today by going to Butcherbox.com/daily and use code daily at checkout to get $30 off your first box! Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Ben Long & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Italy as we know it today is a relatively recent invention. Ever since the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the Italian peninsula has been a patchwork of city-states, duchies, kingdoms, and lands controlled by the Pope. It wasn't until the 19th century that a group of idealistic Italians thought 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.

What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. Many people are not aware that despite its ancient history, Italy as a country, is actually 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 trend that swept through Europe. Italy was unified during the Roman Republic, when Rome conquered all of the neighboring peoples on the Italian peninsula. When the Roman Empire fell and 4.7.000, the Italian peninsula remained unified under the Austro-Gothic 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. And I'm 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 resorgimento, began in the early 19th century during the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon invaded Italy and managed to consolidate all of its various subdivisions into just two. The kingdom of Italy, established in 1805, was in northern Italy and had Napoleon himself as

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, then Napoleon installed his brother-in-law instead. 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 into 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, Roman, Sicilians, 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. and they decided to return Italy to the status quo before Napoleon's invasion. Italy was thus divided as follows. In the south was a large area known as the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, covering southern Italy and Sicily. It was ruled by the Bourbon dynasty, which had recently been restored to power in both Spain and France, and the first king of the restoration was Ferdinand I. The next major state in Italy 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 the Lombardi-Vinisha region. This was under the direct control of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The papal states were a central region of Italy under the direct rule of the Pope. Finally, there was the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and other small duchies in Central Italy, which were heavily influenced by Austria. The restoration of the old order by the Congress of Vienna may have reset the map,

but it couldn't stop the spark of nationalism that had already 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 known as the Carboneri. 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 primarily committed to Italian independence. Two of the movement's early leaders were Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi. Mazini 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 not successful. Garibaldi was a charismatic military leader and an Argent nationalist. Through his military campaigns, he played a crucial role in the unification process. He actually had to flee Italy for South America in 1834 after a failed rebellion, and he remained in South America for 14 years. There were early revolts in 1820 in the Kingdom of two Sicilies and 1821 in the Piedmont, but neither were successful. The map of Italy first began to simplify in 1829, when the Duchies of Parma and Modena began to expand, swallowing up several other nearby duchies.

However, these newly enlarged duchies were still some of the small 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 some 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 Sardinia, 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 Veneta, dashing hopes for Italian

unification at that time. In 1859, the second Italian War of Independence broke out. The Prime Minister of Sardinia, Count Camilo de 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 regions of the Papal States, joined to form the United Provincese of Central Italy. The United Provinces of Central Italy was short-lived. In 1860, plebiscites were held that ceded Nice and Savoy to France and the United Provinceses of Central Italy.

of Central Italy became part of the Kingdom of Sardinia. At least in the north, the map of Italy was starting to take shape. Meanwhile, in the south of Italy, 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 conquest to the king of Sardinia, Victor Emmanuel II. Papal rule was very unpopular with the people who lived in the papal states of the time.

With all the activity going on around Italy, there were numerous uprisings in the eastern Papal States. In November 1860, Sardinia intervened and easily conquered the eastern two-thirds of the papal states. This included Bologna, Ferrara, Umbria, Benevento, and Ponticorvo. On March 17, 1861, Victor Emmanuel II was crowned king. of the new kingdom of Italy. The new state included almost all of the Italian peninsula, except for the Veneto region, still under Austrian control, and the last remnants of the Pable

states. The kingdom of Italy declared its capital to be Rome, which was a problem because it was one of the parts 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 a broader Austro-Prussian war. The Italian military campaign against Austria was largely unsuccessful, suffering defeats at the Battle of Kustoza 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 towards the unification of Italy. Now almost all of the Italian peninsula was under the control of the Kingdom of Italy, except for Rome, and the regent of Lazio surrounding it. This was a difficult not 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 itself. 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. And that left Rome to be defended by a very small contingent of papal forces. Riots broke out all over Rome in support of being part of Italy. King of Victor Manuel waited until France, had lost the Battle of Sedan to ensure that they couldn't come to the rescue. The king tried to offer the Pope several ways out to save face, but Pope Pius I refused everything. The king offered to send in troops under the guise of protecting the Pope, and he also offered

to let the Pope continue to rule over the part of Rome that was inside the Leonine walls. On September 20th, 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 public of San Marino, which I covered in a previous episode. And 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 where 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 the 9th. This was something that every single Pope did over the next 59 years. Pius the 9th, Leo the 13th, Pius the 10th, Benedict the 14th, and Pius the 7th. the 11th, all never left the Vatican once they were elected Pope. The stalemate finally ended in 1929 when Pius XIned the latter in 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 that you'll see today. There was one major part of 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's actually not an Italian-speaking region at all. Austria ceded it to Italy after they lost the First World War. Insofar 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 World War II. There have been a very government. There have been a very government. some minor separatist movements, in particular in South Tyrol and in Lombardy, but they've had

very little support. The success of unification shouldn't be too surprising, considering that Italian unification was an idea that was over 1,500 years in the making. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Benji Long and Cameron Kiever. I want to give a big shout out to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon, including the show's producers. Your story is a show's producers. Your support helps me put out a show every single day. And also, Patreon is currently the only place where Everything Everywhere Daily merchandise is available to the top tier of supporters. If you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and members of the Completionist

Club, you can join the Everything Everywhere Daily Facebook group or Discord server. Links to everything are in the show notes.