Kinlore
1848–1871 (Kingdom of Italy proclaimed 17 March 1861)

The Risorgimento and unification

Revolutionaries, a scheming Piedmontese prime minister and a guerrilla general unite the peninsula under the House of Savoy, and Rome becomes the capital in 1871.

  • The Italian Risorgimento: State, Society and National Unification — Lucy Riall, Routledge (1994)
  • Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero — Lucy Riall, Yale University Press (2007)
  • The Force of Destiny: A History of Italy since 1796 — Christopher Duggan, Allen Lane (2007)
  • Storia linguistica dell'Italia unita — Tullio De Mauro, Laterza (1963)
  • Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes — Eamon Duffy, Yale University Press (2014)

Well established statehoodidentitywarindependencereligion

After Napoleon’s fall in 1815, the Congress of Vienna restored Italy’s old patchwork: Austria ruled Lombardy and Venetia and dominated the smaller duchies, the pope ruled central Italy, and the Bourbons ruled the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies from Naples. Secret societies such as the Carbonari, and the Genoese revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini, dreamed of a united, independent and, for Mazzini, republican Italy.

  • The Italian Risorgimento: State, Society and National Unification — Lucy Riall, Routledge (1994)
  • The Force of Destiny: A History of Italy since 1796 — Christopher Duggan, Allen Lane (2007)

1848 and failure

In 1848 revolutions broke out across the peninsula. Milan drove out the Austrians in five days of street fighting, and a Roman Republic was briefly proclaimed in 1849, defended by Garibaldi. All were crushed. Only the Kingdom of Sardinia, ruled by the House of Savoy from Turin in Piedmont, kept the constitution it had granted.

  • The Italian Risorgimento: State, Society and National Unification — Lucy Riall, Routledge (1994)

Cavour and Garibaldi

Piedmont’s prime minister, Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, was a cautious liberal who aimed first at a stronger Piedmont. He won French support, and in 1859 French and Piedmontese armies defeated Austria; Piedmont gained Lombardy, and the central duchies voted to join it. In May 1860 Garibaldi sailed from near Genoa with about a thousand volunteers, the “Thousand”, landed in Sicily, and in a few months conquered the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Meeting King Victor Emmanuel II at Teano, he handed over his conquests. On 17 March 1861 the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed, with Victor Emmanuel as king.

  • Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero — Lucy Riall, Yale University Press (2007)
  • The Italian Risorgimento: State, Society and National Unification — Lucy Riall, Routledge (1994)

Venetia followed in 1866. On 20 September 1870, as French troops protecting the pope left to fight Prussia, Italian soldiers broke through the walls of Rome at Porta Pia, and Rome became the capital in 1871.

  • The Force of Destiny: A History of Italy since 1796 — Christopher Duggan, Allen Lane (2007)
  • Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes — Eamon Duffy, Yale University Press (2014)

A state looking for a nation

The new kingdom was small in its political base: at first only about 2% of the population could vote. Linguist Tullio De Mauro estimated that only about 2.5% of Italians could speak standard Italian in 1861, though others such as Arrigo Castellani put it closer to 10%; most people spoke local languages and dialects.

  • Storia linguistica dell'Italia unita — Tullio De Mauro, Laterza (1963)
  • The Force of Destiny: A History of Italy since 1796 — Christopher Duggan, Allen Lane (2007)
A famous phrase attributed to the statesman Massimo d’Azeglio sums up the task: “We have made Italy; now we must make Italians.” Historians note the wording is a later paraphrase, but it captured something real.
  • The Force of Destiny: A History of Italy since 1796 — Christopher Duggan, Allen Lane (2007)

Unification also opened the “southern question”. The army fought a brutal war against “brigandage” in the South in the 1860s, part banditry, part peasant revolt, part Bourbon loyalism, with summary executions and martial law. And the Catholic Church, stripped of its state, refused to recognise the new Italy for almost sixty years.

  • Darkest Italy: The Nation and Stereotypes of the Mezzogiorno, 1860–1900 — John Dickie, Macmillan (1999)
  • The Italian Risorgimento: State, Society and National Unification — Lucy Riall, Routledge (1994)
  • Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes — Eamon Duffy, Yale University Press (2014)

Historians like Lucy Riall have shown how much the Risorgimento’s heroic image, Garibaldi’s above all, was built by the propaganda and popular culture of the time. But it remains the founding story of the Italian state.

  • Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero — Lucy Riall, Yale University Press (2007)

How it's seen
The patriotic story

The Risorgimento ("resurgence") was the heroic rebirth of a nation divided and ruled by foreigners for centuries: Mazzini's ideals, Cavour's statecraft and Garibaldi's courage freed Italians and made them one people. This is the version taught for generations and celebrated at the 150th anniversary in 2011.

  • The Italian Risorgimento: State, Society and National Unification — Lucy Riall, Routledge (1994)
  • Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero — Lucy Riall, Yale University Press (2007)

The southern counter-narrative

For many in the South, unification was a conquest by Piedmont that dismantled the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, imposed northern laws and taxes, and crushed resistance as "brigandage". A popular "neo-Bourbon" revisionism goes further, idealising pre-unification Naples; most historians reject its exaggerations but accept that the South was integrated on harsh terms.

  • Darkest Italy: The Nation and Stereotypes of the Mezzogiorno, 1860–1900 — John Dickie, Macmillan (1999)
  • The Italian Risorgimento: State, Society and National Unification — Lucy Riall, Routledge (1994)

The papacy

Pius IX saw the seizure of the Papal States and of Rome in 1870 as robbery, called himself a prisoner in the Vatican and told Catholics not to take part in national elections. The breach was only formally healed by the Lateran Treaty of 1929.

  • Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes — Eamon Duffy, Yale University Press (2014)
  • Vatican I: The Council and the Making of the Ultramontane Church — John W. O'Malley, Harvard University Press (2018)

Why it matters today

Italy

Italy is a young state built on very old cities and regions, and Italians still debate whether unification was a heroic national rebirth or a takeover by the north. The Risorgimento gave the country its flag, its anthem (Mameli's "Il Canto degli Italiani") and its street names, almost every town has a Via Garibaldi, Via Cavour and Via Mazzini, but also the North–South divide and a long, uneasy relationship between the state and the Church.