Hello all,

I hope you are all well, today I will be starting a series of blogs. This series will have shorter posts and will be published more regularly. I hope this gives the blog more structure and focus. Please comment with any feedback.

The series will be focused on both exploring and explaining one aspect of Italian History. Specifically, I want to look at the ‘Risorgiomento’. The ‘Risorgiomento’ as it is known in Italian is the process of Italian Unification. This process was largely completed in 1860, but was the result of a culmination of forces and processes dating back to the French Revolution. The Risorgiomento is an especially interesting and contentious topic. History is a subject where argument is more or less essential. However, the topic of Italian Unification is intensely political and modern. This makes it especially contentious, as the debates are still live and relevant today. For this first blog post, I want to introduce the topic, outline and explain the basics, and show why the ‘Risorgiomento’ has the characteristic of being so contentious to this day.

Italy before and after 1789

An introduction to the topic of Italian Unification needs an explanation of what, loosely, were the processes driving it forward. This is what I aim to establish in this first section.

1789 is the moment where Italian history shifts forever. This change is by no means immediate or inevitable - but looking back it is undeniable. What’s odd about this shift in Italian history is that it is as a result of a non-Italian event - for 1789 was the date of the start of the French Revolution. To understand the Risorgiomento, we need to understand the crucible from which they came – and this was, essentially 1789. From this came one conception of what Italy should be – a unified nation state. This conception of what Italy was conflicted with the essentially divided one that existed in 1789 which had considerable support. It is the conflict between these two versions of Italy that I believe gives Italian history and politics its unique character – one that continues to this day. To understand this, we must understand both conflicting accounts of how Italy should be organised. Let us start with the conception of Italy emanating from 1789.

The French Revolution represented a shift in Italian history for two reasons. The first is that it created a ‘replicable model’ which radicals imitated. The second is that it unified the concept of liberal modernisation with nationalism. Both of these affected the world of ideas and changed dominant conceptions of what is imaginable and conceivable, both need further exploration.

Let’s deal with the fact it was a ‘replicable model’ first. 1789’s revolution provided a set of ideas and concepts that radicals across Europe packaged together into something cohesive. The event of the French Revolution really significantly affected the European consciousness. It did so in many ways. One of the most significant of these was that it made imaginable the notion of ‘revolution’. Before 1789, there was a sense that monarchy was a relatively stable long-term institution for states. Change was conceived of as happening within this framework – and often liberal change was wrapped up in a rhetoric of protection of something ancient. The line went something like ‘we are protecting our ancient and natural liberties’ when the Parlements of France resisted the diktats of Louis XV or Louis XVI. In this way, even the most radical existed within the framework of the monarchical state. In 1789, a different sort of political change became possible. This was revolution. What was so special about this sort of political change was the fact it was total. It affected everything, and completely up-ended the social and political order. What was key is that it was built on different stuff to the previous order, it claimed a different sort of legitimacy. It claimed that the old order was wrong, and this order was right. This model, one where it could be conceived that there was a route to transformative political change, was one that once unleashed could not be unimagined. It is this threat of revolutionary change that would increasingly influence Italy.

The second important aspect of 1789 was the unification of the ideas of liberal modernisation and nationalism. For the modern reader, it may seem strange that both nationalism and liberalism shared a political platform – but don’t be deceived, the logic was clear. The desire to create some form of shared national political community where power was not restricted to the upper classes was common to both. Both were therefore reacting against the traditional order where power was monopolised by monarchs and aristocrats. They saw that the ‘people’ – i.e. the great mass of individuals not in on the deal - needed to be integrated in any model of political legitimacy. In this sense, although the two ideas differed significantly, the fact they were reacting against something kept them ideologically fused. The French Revolution was therefore able to marry them together because it represented a refutation of traditional forms of legitimacy. It had, as an idea, a form of what some call “negative cohesion” – or cohesion in reaction to something. The duo of liberalism and nationalism were tightly bound together into a replicable model that represented an essential refutation of tradition. It is worth noting that often this was made easier still by the presence and influence of both romanticism and classical ideas. Both emphasised sacrifice and both emphasised the importance of the individual. As a result, increasingly there was a ‘brand’ that seemed convincing to the radical thinker. The radical latched onto the pre-made conceptual imagery of the French Revolution, with its emphasis on the new, the national, the liberal and the romantic.

How these two points relate to action in Italy should be reflected upon. The French Revolution made it possible to imagine ‘Revolution’ as a route to political change. This threat, one of radical change built on an attachment to fundamental change had massive significance. The massive geopolitical and ideological transformative shift of 1860 in Italy had its roots here. A united Italy, at the very least, was made conceivable and somewhat legitimate by this fundamental shift in conceptions about how political change worked.

The threat of revolution therefore made significant and radical change possible. The fact this radical change could and did happen had the knock on effect of causing a rapid collision of two competing forms of legitimacy. It is here, where the model of the liberal-nationalist revolution comes into play in Italy. Nationalism was integrated into the radical dogma because of the way the French Revolution had emphasised its centrality. Of course, in the immediate aftermath of 1789 this was not self-evident. However, 1789 made nationalism a conceivable route for Italian radicals to go down, and the one the radicals would eventually prioritise.

In this way, the French Revolution made radical change to the peninsula possible. It also made it possible to think of this radical change occurring to achieve some form of national unity. Both of these, tentative and underdeveloped at first, would go on to become forces responsible for significant change in Italy. To understand how they succeeded, and how they failed, we must look at what existed before.

What Italy Looked Like in 1789

So what was Italy like in 1789? Before we get into how the French Revolution actually changed Italy so fundamentally, we need to understand what it changed. There are two things here. The first is its massive degree of disunity. The second is its poverty.

In 1789, Italy was a fundamentally divided peninsula. Both at first glance, and with greater scrutiny, this is what any observer should draw out. First, there is the map. Just look at it. What greater explanation do I need to give. It’s fundamentally a mesh of small, large and medium sized states with no obvious order or unity. The Kingdom of Naples sprawls across the South. In the North, there is a complex mesh of states between the two large powers of the Kingdom of Piedmont (in Pink and labelled as the Duchy of Savoy) and Republic of Venice. Dominant as well is the Habsburgs, coloured in orange, who occupy several strategically important positions on peninsula including parts of Lombardy and the whole of Tuscany.

When we look closer, things don’t get any more straightforward. Physical disunity was supported by something that later nationalists would call “moral” disunity. The problem was easy to understand. This was that many had a strong sense of what it was to belong to the state, region or city that they lived in. They did not only live in division, they believed in division. Each region had a distinct sense of identity and this identity had a degree of sticking power. The Sicilians, for example, had a long history of asserting themselves against any sort of foreign authority. What sense of political community there was Sicilian, not Italian. This went back a long way, but in 1799, 1848 and 1859, three revolts against the Bourbon dynasty in Sicily were aimed towards greater autonomy, not the creation of Italy. Similarly, as late as 1848, as David Laven points out, Venetians were far more interested in autonomy and recovering past glory to creating a new Italy. The revolution in Venice in that year emphasised a Venetian, not Italian, vision of independence.

The degree of Italian diversity is not surprising given the massive linguistic, historical and cultural divides on the peninsula. Estimates vary considerable, but the proportion of people who actually spoke Italian was very small indeed – until the unification of Italy it was probably below 10%. Instead people spoke varied and impenetrable dialects. Many sounded more Greek, Albanian, French or German than official Italian. For many Italians, people in other states seemed distinctly foreign as a result. If there was a sense of being ‘Italian’, it was both vague and undeveloped. This vague sense of being Italian was never strong to overcome primary loyalty to local regions for the vast majority of Italians.

What’s more, many of the states, regions and cities of Italy had long histories that bound citizens of these places together. Venice, for example, had a long, distinctive past that Venetians were proud of – and rightly so. It had, as a Republic, over 1000 years of history. From the 12th Century onwards it had been one of the richest cities in Europe and a buzzing hub of commercial activity. Its successes were military – including military victories over Italian rivals Genoa, the Byzantines and the Ottomans – but not just military. It had a strange and successful political system with leadership under a Doge, a sort of elected aristocrat, which was unusually long-lasting and stable. It was also at the cutting edge of several cultural artistic movements, most notably the renaissance. Venice is just one of many examples of the pedigree of Italian City States. What is clear, therefore, is that there was not just division, but also a sense by many Italians that this division was justified.

The second aspect, that links relatively closely to the first, is the impoverishment of Italy. The majority of Italy was illiterate, poor and agrarian in the 18th and 19th Century. Although this is the case of a lot of countries across Western Europe – bar maybe Britain – it was especially true of Italy. In Italy at the end of the 18th Century 80% of those on the peninsula worked on the land. This was not that abnormal for Western Europe at the time, but in Italy, unlike the rest of Western Europe, this did not change significantly until the very last years of the 19th Century. In Italy this low level of industrialisation could and would not budge, and therefore traditional ways of life and loyalties remained strong. These sorts of loyalties often included some awareness of those Italian states dotting the peninsula mentioned earlier, but were usually far more local in character. It is important to draw out this point. The rural poor had only vague loyalty and identification with the state, instead they tended to have loyalty to rurally located institutions.

The church is the most obvious of these institutions. In Italy, in the countryside the church was especially strong. The presence of especially strong Catholicism in the countryside was as a result of many years of accumulation of church power in the Peninsula. This was the case especially in the centre – where the Papal States were politically dominant – and the South, as a result of the strength of traditional loyalties and the result of several church campaigns.

Identification with the local community was also key. Local communities often had a distinctive identity and a sense of commonality. As those in the local community were the only people they interacted with, it becomes easy to understand why this was the case. People in the community were, on a day-to-day level, the only other group that the peasantry had any real experience of. Their whole world was therefore built and imagined around this – and not some political unity like a state. When, in addition to this, there was low exposure to abstract political ideas, and even then, they seemed to have very little bearing on your concerns as an agricultural labourer, it is easy to understand rural apathy towards ‘Italy’. All this was magnified in the South significantly as this region was and is much more agrarian and poor than the north. Local communities were often abnormally poor, abnormally distanced from towns and cities, and were abnormally close-knit. It was a magnification of the differences between Italy and Europe, and as a result, the South was especially conservative in character. As a result, the consequences of the Risorgiomento were especially toxic in the South.

Two Competing Ideas of Politics.

Now, we get onto the actual crux of my argument. We have seen that the French Revolution presented a new way of conceptualising ‘Italy’. We have also seen that at the dawn of the 19th Century, Italy was divided “morally” and physically. What happens now is that these two ideas collide, and it is a messy collision. It is such a messy fight that both are unsatisfied and neither is able to dominate the other. This is the case to such a degree that this battle, the local against the national, is still one that is being fought today.

In the beginning there was only division – as the traditional conception and reality of Italy was of a divided peninsula. This was the one that was ideologically and politically self-evident as a unit for political organisation before 1789. It was into this order that post-1789 nationalism entered to win the hearts and minds of Italians.

This form of nationalism as we have established had its roots as a revolutionary movement indebted to the French Revolution. This was partly as a result, as with much of European Nationalism, to Napoleon. Napoleon smashed the map of Italy and remade it. In fact, he did this twice. The first time was in 1796. Young, ambitious and eager to prove himself, Napoleon made his career from risks taken in Italy. One of the things he did following his first successful campaign in 1796 was destroy the previous political map and replace it with one of fewer, but larger states. Two key ones were the Cisalpine Republic and the Roman Republic. Napoleon did not respect historical and cultural boundaries. For example, the Cisalpine Republic had a capital in Milan but included areas in the Po Valley, two areas which were not natural bedfellows. This shows us something essential - Napoleon found legitimacy by appealing not to local loyalties, but to abstract principles. This makes sense – as the French Revolution was so essentially opposed to the traditional order, it was almost inconceivable to not appeal to something else. Napoleon, at this point seen as a relatively left-wing figure, therefore appealed to liberalism, romanticism and nationalism. In fact, he borrowed that ‘package’ or ‘model’ that we began the post with, borrowing forms of legitimacy made imaginable by the French Revolution. He would later consolidate Italian territories into a ‘Republic of Italy’ and a ‘Kingdom of Italy’ that would cover the majority of Northern Italy. This further consolidation shows how in Italy, the ‘model’ of the French Revolution was inextricably linked with at the very least a disrespect for national boundaries. From this developed a sense that a different form of political organisation on the peninsula was possible. Although an idea of a unified Italy was at this point undeveloped, this necessarily created the groundwork for later radical nationalists.

The tension between two visions of Italy was already present in this era. The traditional order fought back in many ways, often successfully. For example, two revolts in Southern Italy created considerable resistance to the Napoleonic machine. Cardinal Ruffo in 1799 more or less expelled the French from the South with a genuinely popular opposition to the first Napoleonic occupation. Similarly, in 1806 onwards, a brutal guerrilla war in Calabria in the South sapped the energies of the vast Napoleonic state. It is no coincidence that these territories had the strongest attachment to those ancient institutions of the church and community. It is the case that communities that had the strongest local ties reacted most strongly to an alien invasion. This was the embryonic form of a conflict of two worldviews that would come to dominate Italy’s history.

I will now deal with the legacy of the interaction of these two versions of what Italy should be. To do this, it is worth noting a few dates and facts about unification. The formal process of unification started in 1859. Under pressure from nationalist radicals, the Piedmontese attacked Austria and other north Italian states and expanded to north Italy. This was justified with a nationalist ideology. In 1860, Giuseppe Garibaldi, an Italian nationalist, headed for Southern Italy with roughly a thousand troops and the aim of creating a fully unified peninsula. He achieved this, and the Kingdom of Italy was formed in 1860, which resulted in a mostly unified peninsula. This is a gross simplification, but it gets the essential narrative across. What’s important to emphasise here, that’s clear even in this simplified narrative, is that at no point was popular insurrection for Italy key to unification. This will be a subject of a later blog post, but what needs to be emphasised is that this was the project of elites. Radicals, not the representative Italian, made Italy. In fact, most Italians were either apathetic or opposed to the Risorgiomento. This tension would become the story of Italy to this day.

The tension of two competing visions of Italy is most clear in Post-Risorgiomento Italy. Prime Ministers after the Risorgiomento had an essential insecurity in the frailty of the political origins of Italy. A sense that although there was physical unity, there was no ‘moral’ unity seemed existential. In the South, there was real and dogged resistance to the new state. Bands of aggrieved individuals, often motivated by disruptions to traditional ways of life, opposed ‘Italy’. In parliamentary circles, the euphemism of ‘brigandage’ was used to explain away the fact that not only was there a lack of loyalty to ‘Italy’, but outright military opposition to it. Only by sending a really significantly sized army to the South of Italy was the state able to temporarily tame this opposition. The successful attempts by a largely unrepresentative elite to implement a top-down political model therefore was both unpopular and almost self-defeating. However, Italy continued its story, and the elites slowly started to make Italians more receptive to being Italian. It is important to emphasise that this was from around 1860 to 1945 almost always at the centre of big decisions. The liberal and fascist attempts to foster loyalty to the new state included war, education and propaganda. In fact, Italian socio-economic development was seen by many key decision-makers to be only important insofar it created a more cohesive ‘Italy’. This obsession was one that created some notion of ‘Italianness’ among most, but the victory was never complete.

It’s important to not get too bogged down in the details. However, I do think it is important to show how enduring this tension is. It is still a key point of political tension to this day. The ability to create a cohesive Italian nation that acts as one has always had to make room for considerable political dissent. Today, this is evidenced by calls for greater regionalism, and a general disdain for the political reality of the liberal post-Risorgiomento nation state. This conflicts directly with the still relatively liberal mainstream commitment to the nation state.

A Continuing Tenison.

Why the Risorgiomento still is so raw for many in today’s Italy is that this tension still exists today. This is partly why the history of the Risorgiomento is so interesting to study. Like a lot of history, competing interpretations of it yield different political ideals.

Matteo Salvini is the name to introduce here. A 21st Century politician who embodies a tension present since the 19th Century. Simultaneously reviled and loved by many, he is a politically Marmite figure in Italy. To get a sense of what he represents, start with an image of Nigel Farage-esque figure, populist, Eurosceptic, outspoken and appealing to the left-behinds. Then, add into this mix poll ratings of up to 40% - he is someone who looks very likely to be the next Italian prime minister. He is not just a classic populist who damns Europe in favour of the nation, no, for Matteo Salvini has his roots in something different. This is the concept of Italian Regionalism. Although Salvini has recently distanced himself from dissatisfaction with the nation state, his party has traditionally been one of regionalism. The party that he is head of has previously called for independence for ‘Padania’, a quasi-Ruritanian name for northern Italy. An attempt to spurn the Risorgiomento, this name reeks of a dissatisfaction.

There remains a tension within Italy about politics. Some Italians believe that unification was good. Some think it is the worst thing that ever happened. Although this is not as existential as it was in the aftermath of the Risorgiomento in 1860, it nevertheless is the big political question in the North of Italy to this day. The Northern League – the Party to which Salvini belongs – has won control of considerable swathes of Northern Italy by appealing to a desire for regional autonomy. For example, in 1996, the Northern League gained over 25% of the vote in Milan. What’s more governors of five northern regions are currently from the Northern League, with these individuals usually calling for greater autonomy at the expense of the centre.

A sense that Milanese or Northern Italian concerns are the primary ones for those living in these regions therefore is a palpable threat to the Italian Nation State. This idea, rooted in an idea of an ‘Italy’ which is more autonomous is one that has enormous sticking power. It belongs to that original conception of Italy that existed before the Risorgiomento - the idea of an Italy divided on historical and cultural lines.

This lasting opposition to the nation indicates that although the forces holding the Italian nation together are sufficient to ensure its survival, they are not enough to banish the issue. Instead, the nature of Italian politics today is that it almost necessarily has to respond to these concerns. The fractured nature of parties in Italy and the core of support for the League in these Northern regions means that it is hard to keep the ‘anti-Italy’ out of Italian Politics.

The ways the lack of a conception of a unified Italy have influenced Italian politics have been vast. Most importantly, perhaps, is the constant inability for Italians to consider the interests of the nation as a whole when making decisions. Northern Italians, especially in Lombardy and Veneto, feel as if they are being pulled down by the South and Centre of Italy. Considering these regions are the economic engine of Italy, it is easy to see why some think this to be the case. Resulting from this worldview is that many are uncooperative to the necessary socio-economic and structural reforms needed to make Italy as a whole a better place. The sense that Southern Italy is filled with leeches to the prosperous north is a very live issue. The most extreme, Millwall-esque supporters of this vision use downright disgusting rhetoric. The most common line on this front is that Africa begins somewhere around Rome. For some extremists, below this relatively arbitrary longitudinal limit lies a ‘racially inferior people’. Obviously, this is not that common a view, but as so often is the case, the fact this sort of thing could exist tells of a really deep level of dissatisfaction. It shows that for many Italians, they do not feel benefit from or loyalty to ‘Italy’. Many Italians instead feel some degree of loyalty to their regions – like the Venice Region. The strength of the historical draw to these places remains strong, as the cultural residue of such strong identities which such rich histories is not easily overcome.

Conclusion

In this way, the fight between two conceptions of what Italy should be has never been truly won. In fact, in many ways the fight is still going strong today. Some see that essential reform is needed within Italy – for example today’s radical centrist 5 Star Movement – whereas others see that the whole project of ‘Italy’ is in essence flawed. The legacy of the forces unleashed by 1789 therefore weigh very heavily on modern Italian politics. The struggle between the regional and the national is something that has its roots in the Risorgiomento.

To understand how uneasy equilibrium could come about it’s important to understand the Risorgiomento. Nothing was inevitable about the eventual success of the nationalists in the creation of a nation state in Italy, but it did come about. How a nation state could form when there was widespread opposition outside of a very narrow elite could happen is illuminating in many ways. It tells us a lot about the internal dynamics of a society – between the government and different groups of people. It tells us a lot the nature of ideas as a motor of events. It tells us a lot about how something can be legitimised even if most don’t agree with this legitimacy. The key point is that it gives us a lot we can reflect on, especially today where the interaction between the nation, the elite and the ‘people’ is so current.

Yours,

WFF

Bibliography:

C. Duggan - A Concise History of Italy

C. Duggan - The Force of Destiny

L. Riall - Risorgiomento: The History of Italy from Napoleon to Nation State

B. Anderson - Imagined Communities

L. Reeder - Italy in the Modern World

D. Mack Smith - Cavour: A Biography