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Another device which appealed to the religious zeal of the people was that of blessing the standards of the imperial party. This official blessing of the French flags was calculated to work an immense effect upon the ignorant and somewhat superstitious population. The authorization ran in this way: |
"MM. les Commissaires will distribute the flags which MM. les Curés are authorized, and indeed invited, to bless. These standards will be in this case presented by the Commune, at the head of the inhabitants, to MM. les Curés, who will receive them at the entry of the church. Finally, you will understand the importance... |
Side by side with this was posted the following official manifesto: |
"The Mayor of Bonneville notifies that the Communal Council will assist at the benediction of the flags which the Imperial Government has presented to the Commune; that this religious ceremony will take place on Sunday, the 22nd, at seven o'clock, A. M.; that the "cortège" will leave the Hotel de Ville to go to the chu... |
"The Imperial Government has made its "début" by a signal benefit in giving us the customs "zone", which has hitherto been refused. It assures to us the prosperity of the country. Its generosity will not end here. French engineers have explored the province, have begun to study the banks of the rivers, the state of the... |
As the day of voting approached, the Central Committee issued the following circular: |
"SIR, The Central Annexationist Committee, upon whose proceedings no restrictions were placed, has named you member of the Special Committee for the parish of ———. You will have the goodness, sir, to concert with your colleagues, Messrs. ———, measures which may unite and bring to the poll on Sunday next the greatest po... |
In addition to all the other pressure, the local police authorities openly declared that lists of the "proscrits" would be made out, and that those who abstained from voting would be punished as soon as they became French subjects. The same authorities received orders from headquarters at Nice to collect the peasants o... |
The same witness wrote subsequently from Bonneville, where he happened to be on the day of the voting in Savoy: |
Historian John A. Davis, said in 2005, "Everyone, it seems, is busy rethinking, revisioning, revisiting, remaking, remapping or demythologizing the Risorgimento. However, it is not the Risorgimento that is being revisited but the changing images that have made it the potent founding myth of the Italian nation for succe... |
Some revisionists tend to negatively re-evaluate key characters of Italian national unity, such as Camillo Benso di Cavour, Giuseppe Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel II of Savoy. They grafted in this way in the debate on the causes of the so-called Southern Question ("Questione Meridionale"), and say that the Risorgimento... |
Background and historical basis of revisionism on the Risorgimento. |
The ideas behind the revisionist movement already began to awaken and strengthen in the years immediately following the events that led to the Kingdom of Sardinia to become the Kingdom of Italy, even before the birth of a historical debate on the subject. The first doubts about the reasons behind the foreign policy of ... |
Statements of Mazzini are precursors of the dispute on the ideal unification process, which began already during the 20th century, as a continuation of the contentious debate between the moderate and democratic parties of Risorgimento. The first criticism of the hagiographic reconstructions came by the same liberal lea... |
Parallel to the abovementioned political and ideal dispute, across the late 19th century began to appear the first historiographical contributions alternative to the mainstream historiography on the Italian Risorgimento. These works furnished the substrate on which the later revisionist theories were built. |
A prime example was the writer Alfredo Oriani, which put into question the outcome of the events of the Risorgimento in his work "The political struggle in Italy" (1892), which examined the conflict between federalism and unitarianism. Oriani criticized the "royal conquest" as a unilateral action to create a new state,... |
Criticisms against the interpretation of the Risorgimento events were also moved by Francesco Saverio Nitti, who in his works "North and South" (Nord e Sud)(1900) and "Italy at the dawn of the twentieth century" (L'Italia all'alba del secolo XX) (1901), analyzed the consequences of the national Unity from a framework i... |
Oriani's ideas influenced the thinking of the liberal Piero Gobetti who in 1926 criticized the liberal ruling class in his collection of essays "Risorgimento without heroes" ("Risorgimento senza eroi"). According to Gobetti, the Risorgimento was the work of a minority who resigned to pursue a deeper social and cultural... |
In the same vein of political and cultural connotations, but with more openly Marxist-style, is part of the revisionist and anti-apologetic analysis of Antonio Gramsci. In his book "Prison Notebooks" (Quaderni del carcere), published posthumously only after 1947, he describes the Risorgimento as a "passive revolution" ... |
The reinterpretation of the Italian Risorgimento's events have not a single origin. The questioning of the assumptions of official history is coming from a part of the academic world and from several independent scholars, including several essayists. The growth of this cultural movement, in particular measure across th... |
In the years following the annexation of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies to the newborn Italian State, contemporary witnesses gave the prints the first works that brought a critical analysis of the political unification of the peninsula. |
In his works, he described the unification process as an assault against two sovereign states (the Two Sicilies and the Church), in violation of international law and in particular of the spiritual and civil values of the Neapolitan nation. The thought of de' Sivo was long the subject of ostracism, in spite of Benedett... |
The years following the unification of Italy also saw the flowering of a vast literature of memoirs in which mainly ex-members of the dissolved Army of Two Sicilies brought their own interpretation of the facts. Among the numerous examples can be mentioned the brothers Pietro and Ludovico Quandel and Giuseppe Buttà. Ch... |
For a description of the events from his point of view Buttà resorted to a cutting language and a tone more sarcastic than de' Sivo's, also sparing no criticism against the Bourbon officers whom he accused of cowardice or treason against the crown. Despite the limitations resulting from transpositions of individual poi... |
The revisionism of Risorgimento knew a clear radicalization and resumed in the mid-20th century, after the fall of the Savoy monarchy and that of fascism, for which the Risorgimento was considered an intangible myth. The changed political conditions allowed the emergence of a group of scholars which began re-examining ... |
In the line of cultural descent, Michele Topa follows Carlo Alianello. By his works "Thus ended the Bourbons of Naples" (Così finirono i Borbone di Napoli) (1959) and "The Brigands of His Majesty" (I briganti di Sua Maestà) (1967), helped to outline a new historiographical conception of the Risorgimento, seen from the ... |
Another leading and more intransigent figure of revisionism was Nicola Zitara. Along the same cultural lines of Alianello and Topa, the Calabrian writer considered Italy as the result of an operation of military conquest and economic damage to the South against which it would have been put in place an intricate plot. I... |
Over the years, the revisionism of Risorgimento has found other supporters, both southern- and northern-born, which further in-depth research on the controversial events of the unification process. Among them we can mention Lorenzo Del Boca, Gigi Di Fiore, Francesco Mario Agnoli, Pino Aprile, Fulvio Izzo, Massimo Vigli... |
Revisionism of Risorgimento is written about, albeit in different ways, by some academic authors, in most cases of non-Italian origin. |
The best-known example is perhaps as the British historian Denis Mack Smith, whose work focuses on the history of Italy from the Risorgimento to the present day. He graduated at Cambridge, a member of the British Academy of Wolfson College (University of Cambridge), of All Souls College (Oxford University) and the Amer... |
A distinctly different opinion was expressed by the scholar against Mazzini in the biography he dedicated to him, where the Italian thinker was positively judged because of the impulse given to the democratic life of the 19th century, with particular reference to the campaigns in favor of social security, universal suf... |
In his essay "Documentary falsification and Italian biography", Mack Smith finally highlighted as the systematic destruction, rewriting in apologetic terms and concealment of official documents is a practice which all states are in danger of falling, but in some moments of Italian history this has been systematic. Citi... |
Another influential member of the academic revisionism is Christopher Duggan, a student of Mack Smith and Director of the Centre for the Advanced Study of Italian Society of the University of Reading. |
In his work "The force of destiny – history of Italy from 1796 to today", Duggan expressed strong criticisms of the most popular historiography, with particular reference to the interpretation of the anti-unification movements in the South and of their repression. In particular, he reports that already in occasion of t... |
According to the English scholar, the governments of the period after 1861 were obliged to represent the furious fighting that occurred in the former territories of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies as solely related to the common crime, as any other interpretation would have clashed sharply with the results of the "plebisci... |
According to Duggan, the substrate on which these statements were based was a mixture of "self-interest and fear". It was useful, in fact, to paint the southern territories as corrupt and backward, as this allowed the new government to justify the imposition of its own constitution and laws, administrative practices an... |
The historian writes that the alleged backwardness of the southern territories was instrumentally used to justify acts of flagrant lawlessness and violence. Over all, it is remembered the event involving the eminent Piedmontan General Giuseppe Govone, which was sent to Sicily with the task of rounding up conscripts and... |
Duggan also examines the problem of the number of those killed in the years after unification, citing Quintino Sella in what he calls a "real civil war". He makes a comparison between the official figures (5,200 killed in fighting between and executed in the period 1861-1865) and those calculated by using the local tes... |
The English historian criticizes the "transplant (to) the whole of Italy (with) the laws and institutions of the Piedmont" on the grounds that it was done "with so little consultation, and a callousness so fast and big, from seriously offending the sensibilities and local interests". If in fact, the Piedmont could clai... |
In addition to the former Kingdom of Two Sicilies, a country of long legal tradition, the replacement of the existing codes with the Piedmont's laws caused extensive discontent in Tuscany, in particular the introduction of the death penalty, which did not exist in enlightened local legal traditions. Others widespread d... |
Duggan turns his critical attention also to the construction of the mythology of the Risorgimento, as defined through the words of Francesco Crispi "religion of the country (which we need to give) the greatest solemnity, the maximum popularity". |
British historian believes that the idealization of the unified movement was consciously pursued through the exaltation of the figures of Vittorio Emanuele II and Garibaldi, as a catalyst and homogenization of the various and often conflicting, monarchical and republican, federal and unitary, conservative and radicals ... |
This operation of iconification on a national scale had accents of the lowest level (such as the placing of plaques on sites in which Garibaldi had spent a few hours to take a bath) and even moments of blatant counterinformation. Duggan reports the case of serious Garibaldi's biography, written by Giuseppe Guerzoni in ... |
Duggan also shows that the work of construction of a mythology of the Risorgimento was also extended to the "nationalization" of school curricula in history, the teaching of which was to be made "so that prospective students absorbed by the history of Italy the love of country". Thus was a careful handling of textbooks... |
In particular, for the protection of the latter, whenever a high political figure died, they proceeded to a careful examination of his papers and private correspondence with the king to expunge and secrete in the Royal Library any incriminating documents. Similarly, the correspondence of Cavour was heavily expurgated o... |
Another member of the academic revisionism is Martin Clark, professor of political history to the University of Edinburgh. |
In his book "The Italian Risorgimento – still a controversial story" Clark says the non-sustainability of the "patriotic and progressive" vision of the unification process. British historian rejects the teleological view of the Risorgimento as an inevitable and finalistic process, considering it rather the correlation ... |
The researcher concludes that "patriotic interpretation of the Risorgimento is wrong, if only for the fact that the Italians were divided and not at all anxious to achieve national unity". |
The British also recognized that academic scholars of the Southern School ("Meridionalisti", see specific paragraph) have shown that the society of the ancient Kingdom of Two Sicilies was not stagnant, and some institutions strongly disputed by mainstream historians, such as estate, were not an index of socio-cultural ... |
Rigorous analyses of the Risorgimento were also conducted by Lucy Riall, a professor of history at Birkbeck College of University of London. |
Italian unification ( ), also known as the Risorgimento (, ; meaning "Resurgence"), was the 19th-century political and social movement that resulted in the consolidation of different states of the Italian Peninsula into a single state, the Kingdom of Italy. Inspired by the rebellions in the 1820s and 1830s against the ... |
Some of the states that had been targeted for unification ("terre irredente") did not join the Kingdom of Italy until 1918, after Italy defeated Austria-Hungary in World War I. For this reason, historians sometimes describe the unification period as continuing past 1871, to include activities during the late 19th centu... |
Italy was unified by Rome in the third century BC. For 700 years, it was a "de facto" territorial extension of the capital of the Roman Republic and Empire, and for a long time experienced a privileged status but was not converted into a province. |
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Italy remained united under the Ostrogothic Kingdom and later disputed between the Kingdom of the Lombards and the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire. Following conquest by the Frankish Empire, the title of King of Italy merged with the office of Holy Roman Emperor. However, th... |
This situation persisted through the Renaissance but began to deteriorate with the rise of modern nation-states in the early modern period. Italy, including the Papal States, then became the site of proxy wars between the major powers, notably the Holy Roman Empire (including Austria), Spain, and France. |
Harbingers of national unity appeared in the treaty of the Italic League, in 1454, and the 15th-century foreign policy of Cosimo De Medici and Lorenzo De Medici. Leading Renaissance Italian writers Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Machiavelli and Guicciardini expressed opposition to foreign domination. Petrarch stated that ... |
The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 formally ended the rule of the Holy Roman Emperors in Italy. However, the Spanish branch of the Habsburg dynasty, another branch of which provided the Emperors, continued to rule most of Italy down to the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14). |
A sense of Italian national identity was reflected in Gian Rinaldo Carli's "Della Patria degli Italiani", written in 1764. It told how a stranger entered a café in Milan and puzzled its occupants by saying that he was neither a foreigner nor a Milanese. Then what are you?' they asked. 'I am an Italian,' he explained." |
After Napoleon fell, the Congress of Vienna (1814–15) restored the pre-Napoleonic patchwork of independent governments. Italy was again controlled largely by the Austrian Empire and the Habsburgs, as they directly controlled the predominantly Italian-speaking northeastern part of Italy and were, together, the most powe... |
An important figure of this period was Francesco Melzi d'Eril, serving as vice-president of the Napoleonic Italian Republic (1802–1805) and consistent supporter of the Italian unification ideals that would lead to the Italian "Risorgimento" shortly after his death. |
Meanwhile, artistic and literary sentiment also turned towards nationalism; Vittorio Alfieri, Francesco Lomonaco and Niccolò Tommaseo are generally considered three great literary precursors of Italian nationalism, but the most famous of proto-nationalist works was Alessandro Manzoni's "I promessi sposi" "(The Betrothe... |
Exiles dreamed of unification. Three ideals of unification appeared. Vincenzo Gioberti, a Piedmontese priest, had suggested a confederation of Italian states under leadership of the Pope in his 1842 book "Of the Moral and Civil Primacy of the Italians". Pope Pius IX at first appeared interested but he turned reactionar... |
Giuseppe Mazzini and Carlo Cattaneo wanted the unification of Italy under a federal republic, which proved too extreme for most nationalists. The middle position was proposed by Cesare Balbo (1789–1853) as a confederation of separate Italian states led by Piedmont. |
One of the most influential revolutionary groups was the Carboneria, a secret political discussion group formed in Southern Italy early in the 19th century; the members were called "Carbonari". After 1815, Freemasonry in Italy was repressed and discredited due to its French connections. A void was left that the Carbone... |
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 fo... |
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. |
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 (mem... |
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 Ch... |
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. |
After 1830, revolutionary sentiment in favor of a unified Italy began to experience a resurgence, and a series of insurrections laid the groundwork for the creation of one nation along the Italian peninsula. |
The Duke of Modena, Francis IV, was an ambitious noble, and he hoped to become king of Northern Italy by increasing his territory. In 1826, Francis made it clear that he would not act against those who subverted opposition toward the unification of Italy. Encouraged by the declaration, revolutionaries in the region beg... |
During the July Revolution of 1830 in France, revolutionaries forced the king to abdicate and created the July Monarchy with encouragement from the new French king, Louis-Philippe. Louis-Philippe had promised revolutionaries such as Ciro Menotti that he would intervene if Austria tried to interfere in Italy with troops... |
At the same time, other insurrections arose in the Papal Legations of Bologna, Ferrara, Ravenna, Forlì, Ancona and Perugia. These successful revolutions, which adopted the "tricolore" in place of the Papal flag, quickly spread to cover all the Papal Legations, and their newly installed local governments proclaimed the ... |
Insurrected provinces planned to unite as the "Province Italiane unite" (United Italian Provinces), which prompted Pope Gregory XVI to ask for Austrian help against the rebels. Austrian Chancellor Metternich warned Louis-Philippe that Austria had no intention of letting Italian matters be, and that French intervention ... |
In early 1831, the Austrian army began its march across the Italian peninsula, slowly crushing resistance in each province that had revolted. This military action suppressed much of the fledgling revolutionary movement, and resulted in the arrest of many radical leaders. |
Revolutions of 1848–1849 and First Italian War of Independence. |
On 5 January 1848, the revolutionary disturbances began with a civil disobedience strike in Lombardy, as citizens stopped smoking cigars and playing the lottery, which denied Austria the associated tax revenue. Shortly after this, revolts began on the island of Sicily and in Naples. In Sicily the revolt resulted in the... |
In February 1848, there were revolts in Tuscany that were relatively nonviolent, after which Grand Duke Leopold II granted the Tuscans a constitution. A breakaway republican provisional government formed in Tuscany during February shortly after this concession. On 21 February, Pope Pius IX granted a constitution to the... |
Meanwhile, in Lombardy, tensions increased until the Milanese and Venetians rose in revolt on 18 March 1848. The insurrection in Milan succeeded in expelling the Austrian garrison after five days of street fights – 18–22 March (Cinque giornate di Milano). An Austrian army under Marshal Josef Radetzky besieged Milan, bu... |
Soon, Charles Albert, the King of Sardinia (who ruled Piedmont and Savoy), urged by the Venetians and Milanese to aid their cause, decided this was the moment to unify Italy and declared war on Austria (First Italian Independence War). After initial successes at Goito and Peschiera, he was decisively defeated by Radetz... |
While Radetzky consolidated control of Lombardy-Venetia and Charles Albert licked his wounds, matters took a more serious turn in other parts of Italy. The monarchs who had reluctantly agreed to constitutions in March came into conflict with their constitutional ministers. At first, the republics had the upper hand, fo... |
Before the powers could respond to the founding of the Roman Republic, Charles Albert, whose army had been trained by the exiled Polish general Albert Chrzanowski, renewed the war with Austria. He was quickly defeated by Radetzky at Novara on 23 March 1849. Charles Albert abdicated in favour of his son, Victor Emmanuel... |
In 1857, Carlo Pisacane, an aristocrat from Naples who had embraced Mazzini's ideas, decided to provoke a rising in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. His small force landed on the island of Ponza. It overpowered guards and liberated hundreds of prisoners. In sharp contrast to his hypothetical expectations, there was no ... |
The Second Italian Independence War of 1859 and its aftermath. |
The Austrians were defeated at the Battle of Magenta on 4 June and pushed back to Lombardy. Napoleon III's plans worked and at the Battle of Solferino, France and Sardinia defeated Austria and forced negotiations; at the same time, in the northern part of Lombardy, the Italian volunteers known as the Hunters of the Alp... |
Sardinia eventually won the Second War of Italian Unification through statesmanship rather than armies or popular election. The final arrangement was ironed out by "back-room" deals instead of in the battlefield. This was because neither France, Austria, nor Sardinia wanted to risk another battle and could not handle f... |
Sardinia annexed Lombardy from Austria; it later occupied and annexed the United Provinces of Central Italy, consisting of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Duchy of Parma, the Duchy of Modena and Reggio and the Papal Legations on 22 March 1860. Sardinia handed Savoy and Nice over to France at the Treaty of Turin, decisi... |
Thus, by early 1860, only five states remained in Italy—the Austrians in Venetia, the Papal States (now minus the Legations), the new expanded Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and San Marino. |
Francis II of the Two Sicilies, the son and successor of Ferdinand II (the infamous "King Bomba"), had a well-organized army of 150,000 men. But his father's tyranny had inspired many secret societies, and the kingdom's Swiss mercenaries were unexpectedly recalled home under the terms of a new Swiss law that forbade Sw... |
In the meantime, Giuseppe Garibaldi, a native of Nice, was deeply resentful of the French annexation of his home city. He hoped to use his supporters to regain the territory. Cavour, terrified of Garibaldi provoking a war with France, persuaded Garibaldi to instead use his forces in the Sicilian rebellions. On 6 May 18... |
Near Salemi, Garibaldi's army attracted scattered bands of rebels, and the combined forces defeated the opposing army at Calatafimi on 13 May. Within three days, the invading force had swelled to 4,000 men. On 14 May Garibaldi proclaimed himself dictator of Sicily, in the name of Victor Emmanuel. After waging various s... |
With Palermo deemed insurgent, Neapolitan general Ferdinando Lanza, arriving in Sicily with some 25,000 troops, furiously bombarded Palermo nearly to ruins. With the intervention of a British admiral, an armistice was declared, leading to the Neapolitan troops' departure and surrender of the town to Garibaldi and his m... |
This resounding success demonstrated the weakness of the Neapolitan government. Garibaldi's fame spread and many Italians began to consider him a national hero. Doubt, confusion, and dismay overtook the Neapolitan court—the king hastily summoned his ministry and offered to restore an earlier constitution, but these eff... |
The settling of the peninsular standoff now rested with Napoleon III. If he let Garibaldi have his way, Garibaldi would likely end the temporal sovereignty of the Pope and make Rome the capital of Italy. Napoleon, however, may have arranged with Cavour to let the king of Sardinia free to take possession of Naples, Umbr... |
It was in this situation that a Sardinian force of two army corps, under Fanti and Cialdini, marched to the frontier of the Papal States, its objective being not Rome but Naples. The Papal troops under Lamoricière advanced against Cialdini, but were quickly defeated and besieged in the fortress of Ancona, finally surre... |
Garibaldi distrusted the pragmatic Cavour since Cavour was the man ultimately responsible for orchestrating the French annexation of the city of Nice, which was his birthplace. Nevertheless, he accepted the command of Victor Emmanuel. When the king entered Sessa Aurunca at the head of his army, Garibaldi willingly hand... |
The progress of the Sardinian army compelled Francis II to give up his line along the river, and he eventually took refuge with his best troops in the fortress of Gaeta. His courage boosted by his resolute young wife, Queen Marie Sophie, Francis mounted a stubborn defence that lasted three months. But European allies r... |
The fall of Gaeta brought the unification movement to the brink of fruition—only Rome and Venetia remained to be added. On 18 February 1861, Victor Emmanuel assembled the deputies of the first Italian Parliament in Turin. On 17 March 1861, the Parliament proclaimed Victor Emmanuel King of Italy, and on 27 March 1861 Ro... |
Three months later Cavour died, having seen his life's work nearly completed. When he was given the last rites, Cavour purportedly said: "Italy is made. All is safe." |
Mazzini was discontented with the perpetuation of monarchical government and continued to agitate for a republic. With the motto "Free from the Alps to the Adriatic", the unification movement set its gaze on Rome and Venice. There were obstacles, however. A challenge against the Pope's temporal dominion was viewed with... |
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