Q10.Explain how Italian unification was achieved.
Answers
Answer:
In 1815 at the close of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars the statesmen representing the great powers, in their efforts to restore stable governance to Europe after twenty-six years of turmoil, came to accept (under the persuasion of Talleyrand - the Foreign Minister of the recently restored French monarchy) that "legitimate sovereigns" should be restored, where possible, to their thrones.
Prior to the first irruption of what developed into French, and European, revolutionary unrest after 1789 the political shape of the Italian peninsula derived in large part from the influence of Papal diplomacy over the previous millennium where the Popes had tended to strongly support the existence of a number of small states in the north of the peninsula such that no strong power might presume to try to overshadow the papacy.
Such political decentralisation may have facilitated the emergence of a number of mercantile city states such as the Florence of the Medicis and the Milan of the Sforzas and to have allowed a scenario where ambitious men such as Cesare Borgia could attempt to establish themselves as rulers of territories won by statecraft and the sword. The burgeoning wealth of these city states, despite much political turmoil, helped to fund that re-birth of classical learning and of artistic expression that is known as the Renaissance.
As time passed some of these mercantile states became reconstituted as Duchies and Grand Duchies. By the mid eighteenth century the north of the Italian peninsula featured a number of such dynastic states together with mercantile republics such as Genoa and Venice. The former Duchy of Savoy meanwhile, originally based on limited territories north of the Alps, had expanded to also include Nice, Piedmont (an extensive territory in the north-east of the Italian peninsula) and the island of Sardinia and was known by its senior title as the Kingdom of Sardinia. The Noble House of Savoy maintained its court at Turin in Piedmont. The kingdom under the sovereignty of the House of Savoy is referred to by historians as Sardinia, Piedmont or Piedmont-Sardinia or Sardinia-Piedmont.
In the settlements to the Napoleonic Wars statesmen, in their efforts to restore political stability to Europe, reconstituted most of the Duchies and Grand Duchies often under rulers drawn from junior branches of the Habsburg dynasty or otherwise under Habsburg Austrian tutelage. Habsburg Austria was awarded sovereignty over Lombardy and over the former Venetian Republic whilst the Republic of Genoa was similarly entrusted to the House of Savoy. The territories of the church that straddled the central portion of the peninsula were again placed under Papal sovereignty whilst to the south the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (Sicily and Naples) was restored to a junior branch of the Spanish Bourbon dynasty.
Unification Of Italy
Like Germany, Italy has a long history of political fragmentation.
During the middle of the 19th century, Italy was divided into seven states of which only one state(Sardinia-Piedmont) was ruled by an Italian princely house.
The main leaders of unification process are these three revolutionaries: 1) Giuseppe Mazzini, 2) Count de Cavour and 3) Giuseppe Garibaldi.
→In Italy,
• The north part was ruled by Austrian Habsburg.
• Middle part was under Pope.
• And the Southern part was ruled by Bourbon Dynasty.
→ Later, Giuseppe Mazzini subsequently found two secret societies, Young Italy and Young Europe.
→ With the failure of revolutionaries, the responsibility fell on Sardinia Piedmont under its ruler King Victor Emmanuel-2 to unify the Italian states through war.
→ At the end, Austrian Habsburg were defeated by Cavour with the help of France.
→ Bourbon Dynasty were defeated by the Giuseppe Garibaldi with the support of Peasants.
Hence, Strong nationalist cultural movements and economic development are factors which prepare the ground for Italian unification.