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IV.
FROM THE CONQUEST OF ITALY TO NOWADAYS
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IN SHORT (XIX-XX sec.)
The
‘700 ended with the French Revolution and with the general (later on
emperor) Napoleon who spread in all Europe the revolutionary ideals.
In spite of the Napoleon defeat the ideals of revolution had their
effects in twenty years. In Italy the revolutionary ideals joined
themselves to a newborn nationalism that carried, under the guide of the
Savoia reign, to the conquest of peninsula (partial in 1861 total or
almost in 1870).
The new Italy in this way reconstructed entered in the game of European
powers: first with an erroneous colonial politics, then allied with the
European powers in the two World Wars: in the first war Italy allied
itself with France, England, Russia and then USA and other states
against Germany and Austro-Hungarian empire (1915-18, Italy entered one
year later); in the second war Italy allied itself with Germany and
Japan against France, England, Russia, USA and other states (1940-45,
Italy entered one year later).
From
the second postwar period Italy of today rose: a
complex and contradictory entity that maintains in its inside the vital
traces of an ancient past. |
1.
FROM TRICOLOUR TO THE RUBBLE OF PORTA PIA (XIX sec.)
2.
ITALY OF COLONIALISM AND WORLD WARS (XX sec.)
3.
ITALY TODAY
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The Eighteenth century ended in
Europe with an event which lasted consequences until nowadays: the
French Revolution (1789). This event was the
first of series which gradually upset a by then obsolete social
order: the aristocracy was by then a parasitical and decaying class;
to survive it would have had to adapt itself to the time, but this
was opposed to the nature of aristocracy (except the socalled
enlightened aristocracy, that is who understood how to maintain
their interests). Thanks to the Revolution the
big potentialities of France came out: France actually enlarged its
limits driven by an able general (Napoleon Bonaprte) and diffused
the revolutionary ideals.
Italy was invaded by Napoleon, who
formed in a first moment republics around the whole peninsula
(Cisalpina, Ligure, Romana, Partenopea), and then unified them in
the Kingdom of Italy. The descent of Napoleon brought also to the
creation of the Italian flag in Reggio Emilia.
The defeat of Npoleon marked also the end of
the republican experience and the one of the Kingdom of Italy; the
steadyness was restored by the council of Wien (1815), which tried
to return anachronistically the pre-Napoleonic and pre-revolutionary
Europe.
But, like we mwntioned before, the
French Revolution was the first step to the breakage of the fictious
balance temporarily restored in 1815; in 1848 uprising actually rose
in whole Europe. In Italy the social discontent joined the desire of
national unity, creating that movement called Renaissance. The
Kingdom of Savoy foretold this feeling and, with an ablr strategist
like Camillo Benso of Cavour, decided to undertake the conquest of
Italy.
Through the alliance with the
Frenches, the Piedmonteses wrung Lombardy from the Austrians (during
the Second Indipendence War); after this success Emilia Romagna and
Tuscany self-annexed themselves to the new emerging state. Garibaldi’s
undertaking in the South of Italy (the famous landing of the one
thousand), joined together with the king’s discent for the regions
of central Italy, allowed a large part of the peninsula to be
unified in 1861, leaving the remaider of the State of Church (by
then only a part of Lazio)nand Venetia (still belonging to the
Austrians).
Also the two missing regions were
soon annexed to the kingdom. In 1866 Italy drew up with Prussia
during the war against Austria; this allowed Italy to gain Venetia;
in the meanwhile after 1870 (the year of French defeat against the
Prussians) the bersaglieri entered Rome through a breach on Porta
Pia, annexing the last missing region to the kingdom and decreeing
the end of the State of te Church (except that which is still today
the Vatican City).
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Stages
of the conquest of Italy by the Piedmonteses.
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So united Italy arrived to the
threshold of the 20th century, preserving however (still today) an
incredible heterogeneity of dialects and local cultures. Unity
allowed the new sovereigns to think an egemonic policy like the
other European powers, which were pursuing since time a colonialist
policy. So Italians decided to undertake the imperialist enterprise
in Africa, cutting out for themselves a place between the Frenches
and the Englishes.
Italian colonial policy (which
envolved Libya, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somaliland) was a real failure,
it went down in history like the "imperialism of
ragamuffins". The
annexation of Trentino-Alto Adige and of Istria was instead more
concrete: these territories were the result of a right alliance
during the First World War (1915 - 1918, Italy went in war a year
later), against the Austrians and the Germans.
The first postwar period was not,
instead, one of the happiest periods of Italian history: since 1922
Italy saw the ascent of the Fascist party driven by Benito
Mussolini, who drove the state in the Second World War together with
Germany and Japan.
The end of the war brought the end of
the Fascist dictatorship and the loss of Istria.
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Like we
have already seen, Italy is today depositary of more than two
thousands years of civilisation sedimented in monuments, in art, in
literature and even in cooking and in custom of the Italians (or
perhaps... It is more correct to say the inhabitants of Italy,
because of the differences and the peculiarities of the individual
regions). |
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