Write a note of 150 to 200 words on:
Italy unification
German unification
Answers
Answer:
By 1871 both the kingdom of Italy and the empire of Germany were united. Even though both countries used popular trends to that time, both liberalism and nationalism, the process unifying these two countries was very different. The end result was Germany emerging as a strong nation and Italy appropriately, the weaker.
Italy’s problems started with the fact that it didn’t have one main ruler, but two people and a concept, resulting in a different approach to the unification. Giuseppe Mazzini had a radical program focusing on a centralized democratic republic based on universal suffrage and the will of the people.
Otto von Bismarck and the German unification:
1. The middle class Germans in 1848 tried to unite the different regions of the German confederation into a-state.
2. Prussian Chief Minister, Otto Von Bismarck, with the help of the army and bureaucracy carried out the task of unification.
3. Three wars over seven years with Austria, Denmark and France ended in Prussian victory and completed the process of unification.
4. On 18th January 1871, the Prussian King , Kaiser William-1 was proclaimed German emperor in a ceremony held at Versailles in the presence of important officialls, army representatives and Otto von Bismarck.
Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi
The first meeting between Garibaldi and Mazzini at the headquarters of Young Italy in 1833.
Many leading Carbonari revolutionaries wanted a republic, two of the most prominent being Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi. Mazzini's activity in revolutionary movements caused him to be imprisoned soon after he joined. While in prison, he concluded that Italy could − and therefore should − be unified, and he formulated a program for establishing a free, independent, and republican nation with Rome as its capital. Following his release in 1831, he went to Marseille in France, where he organized a new political society called La Giovine Italia (Young Italy), whose motto was "Dio e Popolo" (God and People), which sought the unification of Italy.
Garibaldi, a native of Nice (then part of Piedmont), participated in an uprising in Piedmont in 1834 and was sentenced to death. He escaped to South America, though, spending fourteen years in exile, taking part in several wars, and learning the art of guerrilla warfare before his return to Italy in 1848.
Early revolutionary activity
Guglielmo Pepe
The Arrest of Silvio Pellico and Piero Maroncelli, Saluzzo, civic museum
Exiles and European and masculine ideals
Many of the key intellectual and political leaders operated from exile; most Risorgimento patriots lived and published their work abroad after successive failed revolutions. Exile became a central theme of the foundational legacy of the Risorgimento as the narrative of the Italian nation fighting for independence. The exiles were deeply immersed in European ideas, and often hammered away at what Europeans saw as Italian vices, especially effeminacy and indolence. These negative stereotypes emerged from Enlightenment notions of national character that stressed the influence of the environment and history on a people's moral predisposition. Italian exiles both challenged and embraced the stereotypes and typically presented gendered interpretations of Italy's political "degeneration". They called for a masculine response to feminine weaknesses as the basis of a national regeneration, and fashioned their image of the future Italian nation firmly in the standards of European nationalism.
Two Sicilies insurrection
In 1820, Spaniards successfully revolted over disputes about their Constitution, which influenced the development of a similar movement in Italy. Inspired by the Spaniards (who, in 1812, had created their constitution), a regiment in the army of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, commanded by Guglielmo Pepe, a Carbonaro (member of the secret republican organization), mutinied, conquering the peninsular part of Two Sicilies. The king, Ferdinand I, agreed to enact a new constitution. The revolutionaries, though, failed to court popular support and fell to Austrian troops of the Holy Alliance. Ferdinand abolished the constitution and began systematically persecuting known revolutionaries. Many supporters of revolution in Sicily, including the scholar Michele Amari, were forced into exile during the decades that followed.
Piedmont insurrection
The leader of the 1821 revolutionary movement in Piedmont was Santorre di Santarosa, who wanted to remove the Austrians and unify Italy under the House of Savoy. The Piedmont revolt started in Alessandria, where troops adopted the green, white, and red tricolore of the Cisalpine Republic. The king's regent, prince Charles Albert, acting while the king Charles Felix was away, approved a new constitution to appease the revolutionaries, but when the king returned he disavowed the constitution and requested assistance from the Holy Alliance. Di Santarosa's troops were defeated, and the would-be Piedmontese revolutionary fled to Paris.
In Milan, Silvio Pellico and Pietro Maroncelli organized several attempts to weaken the hold of the Austrian despotism by indirect educational means. In October 1820, Pellico and Maroncelli were arrested on the charge of carbonarism and imprisoned.