Italy – 1815-1848. The Creation of the Idea of Italy

Dear all,

This is the second part of my series explaining the unification of the Italian peninsula. This will be the first part of the Risorgiomento series to cover a period. I will be focusing on the development of the Italian nationalism from 1815-1848. This period, traditionally seen as one of ‘reaction’ has been often misunderstood. Assumptions about the presence and strength of the movement before the 1840s have meant that this period has been seen as a successful repression of a genuinely popular movement. In my view this is erroneous.

In fact, this period of Italian history has been a victim of a certain form of reading history backwards. The later success of the nationalist movement in creating Italy has made us far more conscious of the nationalist movement pre-1848. This is not to say it is irrelevant. In fact, the period 1815 to 1848 is marked by the rise in the perception of the threat the nationalist movement appears to hold. It is this story, one of increasing activism, mostly hopeless, that shapes this period. Ultimately, however, the strength of the existing order combined with the paucity of options for the nationalists combined to make structural impediments to change very strong.

I will deal with three things today. The first is the strength and characteristics of the impediments to change. The second is analysing the success of the so-called ‘Democrats’. The final is analysing the success of the so-called ‘Moderates’.

An Introduction to the Era

Ok, if you are a newcomer or novice to Italian History, let me set you the scene. Italy had, since the early middle ages been divided. Many little Italian states dotted the peninsula. As time went by, these both came under foreign influence and grew a little larger in size as rulers of some city states consolidated their power. For example, the ‘Kingdom of Naples’ in the South was often controlled by foreign French, Austrian or Spanish dynasties and stretched over the whole of the Southern part of the peninsula. By the 18th Century, the Austrians had significant informal control over the north of the peninsula, and the Spanish-French Bourbons controlled the Southern Kingdom of Naples.

In 1796, Napoleon destroyed this stable order. At this time, Napoleon was just a prominent general, not the ruler of France. He destroyed the old order and made a new one that represented both his interests combined with a commitment to new enlightenment ideas. At the time, the ideas tended to be relatively vague, but essentially liberal. They also contained a commitment to the nation. This may seem strange today, but as I have discussed in the previous post, nationalism can be conceived in a different way to the way many currently think about it. As a reaction against the feudal order, nationalism made sense as an ideology. It was the ‘people’ of the nation taking control against an elite whose legitimacy stemmed from the divine right of kings. In this sense, ‘democracy’ was seen as something that the national community achieves and reaps the benefits of.

Napoleon created a peninsula which differed significantly from the previous order. A lot of Italy was directly integrated into France. The South stayed the same, but was given over to Napoleonic cronies. The ‘Kingdom of Italy’ in the centre of Italy payed lip service to nationalist liberal ideas. It covered a significant portion of the north of the peninsula, and had – at times – a semblance of democratic and liberal freedoms.

In 1815, however, Napoleon was defeated, and Europe was re-ordered into something that better reflected historical control. Austria, who was one of the main architects of the continental peace settlement, largely took informal control of the peninsula. Under Chancellor Metternich, Austrians formally or informally gained influence over most of the region. For the next 30 or so years – up to 1848 – the peninsula would remain largely stable. This stability, situated between two periods of massive instability – those being under Napoleon and from 1848-1860 – has traditionally sought explanations that have read this period as anomalous and a time of reaction. Some ‘Whig’ historians have traditionally seen this period as one where traditional force try to arrest the inevitable forward march of progress. As I will show, this overemphasises the strength of nationalist-liberal movements on the peninsula – what’s more, it both underestimates the cohesion and strength of Austria, and misunderstands the intentions of the Austrians.

Structural Impediments to Change

There are many reasons why, in 1815, unifying Italy was not easy. I think the key reasons are the lack of nationalism and the way the state system on the peninsula worked. However, before we look at both of these, I think it is important to understand why one interpretation of post-1815 Italy I have already hinted at is incorrect.

The notion of a reactionary peninsula, filled with states opposed to any sort of change, doomed by the forces of history has had considerable sticking power in the imaginations of many. From the future, this sort of analysis sounds reasonable – the existing order had a lot to lose out on from disappearing into the abyss of history. If it was acting rationally, it would try to do whatever it could to arrest the forces of change. As Lucy Riall pithily notes, post-1815 Italy has been seen by many as ‘a doomed and repressive attempt to turn the clock back’. Evidence for this interpretation has often been found in the figure of Metternich, who has been traditionally been seen as the arch-conservative lynchpin of the conservative European order. As both Chancellor and Foreign Minister of the Austrian Empire from 1821 to 1848, causally significant agency has often been attributed to him. In fact, this interpretation has several flaws. These flaws provide the backdrop to understanding what the actual problems were in Italy for the nationalist movement.

The biggest problem for both this interpretation and the nationalist movement and a common theme through Italian history is the fact that – simply stated, Italy had very few ‘Italians’. I have made this point before, and it is important not to make it too much, but unfortunately for Italy it is its biggest problem.

Essentially, in 1815, the vast majority of people identified with communities much smaller than Italy as a whole. There were multiple variations on this. If you were an urban elite, you often had an extremely strong connection with your city or region. The Venetians, Tuscans and Modenese were Venetians, Tuscans and Modenese first and foremost. The strong sense of history in each region, the linguistic diversity on the peninsula and the ‘othering’ of those not from your state in the peninsula all contributed. The key point is that there were really strong historical identities relating to most parts of the Italian peninsula. The Venetians had and continued to have a very strong identity brought on by having a distinct and varied 1000-year history, a Venetian language and rivalries with others on the peninsula. The Venetian elites did not, therefore, share that same enthusiasm that the French, German, Spanish or British cultural and political elites shared for their national community.

This was one aspect of this problem, and the most pressing for an Italian national movement in 1815. Like most countries during this period, the agrarian nature of the economy meant that there was even less sense of nationalism in the rural areas where the majority of the population resided. However, this was a common theme across Europe, and would only become a real Italian problem much later in its history. What mattered at this moment specifically was that the cultural and political elites – those at the very top of society who usually were the harbingers of radical, revolutionary change – did not actually care about the nation as we see it.

The notion of a ‘cultural and political elites’ need to be clarified. The notion of any elite has become increasingly contentious in recent years. For this reason I should set out exactly who this elite were in Italy at this time. They were - loosely – a grouping of literate, well read and influential individuals that tended to have social, economic and political pre-eminence in Italy at the time. They could exist in the courts of ancient monarchies, in the aristocracy or political assemblies and groups of intellectuals. They straddled what socialists may call ‘class’, usually existing in both the aristocracy and bourgeoisie. What is important here is that it is a loose grouping, the elite never identified with that label. However, this elite was defined in respect to their relationship with their ability to aid or threaten the state. They often, for example, were crucial in the implementation of laws, and were the key members of the emerging public sphere. This elite was politically active and often had the means to make this count. It was usually them, and not the peasantry or the artisanal classes, that gave ‘revolutions’ their political character. Similarly, they also had the ability to make a change in regime swift and painless, as they often constituted the bureaucracy. They, as the leaders, therefore were the major threat to the existing regime.

In any case, in Italy, the problem was they tended to not be that taken in by those ‘revolutionary’ ideas. This was a big problem, and one that would be needed to be tackled if there was to be some sort of push for Italian unification. Without this, Italian unification would not be possible. The initiative for Italian Unification lay with the political elites – and without their support, Unification was almost impossible. As we will see, there is plenty of evidence for the lack of initial numerical strength of the movement, and a preference for identifying with the local and regional over the national, in the failures and characteristics of the ‘Revolutions’ in the 1830s and 1840s.

This fact also provides the reasons for discounting the traditional interpretation. Most of the cultural and political elites, the people that are meant to be clamouring for the rooftops for unification did not support unification. They just didn’t. There were only a very small number of individuals who identified with the notion of Italy. They tended to believe that, instead, that they belonged to the smaller statelets dotted across the peninsula. As a result, reaction did and could not exist on the peninsula. It just couldn’t. The numbers of cultural and political elite that were willing to sacrifice everything for Italy was too insignificant to justify repression, and the vast majority of rulers had a stable base of support among this same elite.

The State System

The second reason, why, you as an Italian Nationalist in 1815 would have struggled to create Italy is that your options weren’t necessarily obvious as to how to go about it. The way states were organised on the peninsula in 1815 meant that options were limited and crises and revolutions could easily be stamped out. Let’s start with a map.

These borders, with one very minor exception, would stay the same from 1815 to 1859. The map results from the Treaty of Vienna which divided Italy as it is below. The ways in which the states are divided is mostly based off the historical boundaries of the peninsula. In the south and centre the ‘Kingdom of Two Sicilies’, (in pink) - also known as the ‘Kingdom of Naples’ - as well as the Papal State (in grey) both occupy historical boundaries. Other states include Piedmont-Sardinia, (in yellow, in the far north) and Tuscany (in yellow, bordering the grey) – both being relative well-established states with historical boundaries. In the North was an Austrian-controlled region known as Venetia-Lombardy, which on the map is Orange. This region had traditionally been two, one dominated by Habsburgs (Lombardy), and one which had been its own state – in the form of Venice. This region was one of the richest in Italy, and provided the Austrians with considerable revenues.

The important thing to note in all these cases is that independent, ancient states existed. Despite this, across most of Italy, Austria was able to exert considerable degrees of control. It is this stable mix, whereby Austria could take advantage of the system without taking much flak from doing so that provides the context for the Italian national movement. States that were ancient and loved by their inhabitants remained states, but informally were strongly influenced by the whims of the Habsburgs. The duchies of Parma, Modena and Tuscany all had Habsburgs as their monarchs. Lombardy-Venetia was directly controlled by the Habsburgs. The Papal States and Naples were reliant on Austria to help them if there was unrest, and Austria willingly obliged. The result of this was that in all but one state – that is Piedmont - Austria was a key political actor in domestic affairs. In this way, strong, stable states that had a considerable degree of stability by virtue of the ancient character, coexisted with Austrian hegemony.

Of course, in certain instances, this balance did not work as smoothly as I have just set out. In Venice, with a long history of independence, there was some opposition to Austrian domination. I think, nevertheless, this only reveals the messiness of history, and this is not that good a counter-example. No system can capture everything but putting things into boxes or ‘systems’ is necessary to convey information to the reader. Even in this case, there were attempts by the Austrian authorities to cede power to the local authorities. It is this consciousness of action which makes this ‘system’ of description relatively convincing. The relatively conscious attempt by Metternich to make a long-lasting stable peninsula informed Austrian action, and Metternich was not politically idiotic. He attempted to create this aforementioned balance and largely did it well, maintaining more or less direct control over the entire peninsula.

Before I move on to the conclusions of the state system, it is also important to describe the politics of the peninsula to you. There was really significant degrees of variation in the politics. Metternich and the Austrians tended to try make those on the peninsula work with forces for change, instead of reacting against them. There were a few out-and-out reactionaries that nevertheless successfully achieved political prominence in the states across the peninsula. However, the character of these examples tells us a lot about Italy at this time generally. Lucy Riall, whose analysis on the Italian Restoration is excellent, points to those like Leo XII and Victor Emmanuel I as evidence of some real reaction. There are many things about both these cases that are quite telling. In both cases, the Austrians were unable to significantly influence policy. What’s more, in both cases, Austria was not keen on the longevity of both rulers’ strategy. In this way, we should not see the Austrians as an omnipotent force who had critical leverage on all states across the peninsula. No, instead, as with most things that relate to power, there was an uneasy balance between individual actors. The Austrians usually tried to do things for the good of the rulers, and when they gave advice it was usually out of the knowledge that they couldn’t do without that particular ruler. If there was a revolution in the Papal States, it would be the Austrians cleaning up and returning the Pope to political pre-eminence.

The Austrian power was thus military in places it did not directly control. The Austrians had the ability to use armed force that could overwhelm any political actor in the peninsula. To translate this power into an order to do X or Y, however, is and continues to be very hard. Every actor, like in most things, has some flexibility around external constraints stopping them from doing otherwise. The Austrians would only use force in the extreme, and so most political actors had the ability to act in a mostly independent way. Therefore, Austria had some power over the peninsula, and it was sometimes significant, but largely states and regions were relatively autonomous and independent actors. There was, largely, little common experience of repression, or a common sense of grievance against Austria. If there was any anger at Austria, it was usually against relatively specific local policies, or perceptions about these policies. In the 1848 revolutions, where there was genuine outpourings of dissatisfaction in some regions, it was often the local, not the common experience of Austria which motivated action. In Venice and Lombardy, perceptions about tax-collection – and not a sense of Austrian-on-Italian oppression - were key in making these two places revolt.

The state system made it very hard for anyone wanting Italy-wide change from doing so. The system encouraged local grievances at the expense of national grievances because of the flexibility of the Austrian-led system. Therefore, those looking to do anything to Italy as a whole faced a problem all too familiar today. It’s like this. If you think that there is a problem with something global, let’s say economic growth, in today’s world, you face a problem. How can you possibly stop global economic growth? If you manage to get lucky enough to get political power in one country, you are not able to translate this into a global transition. You just can’t. There is no political entity which has sufficient power to do it. In the increasingly global world, where we face global problems due to our globalised economy, we don’t have the means for global change. It’s a similar thing with Italy, but with Italy it’s even worse. You have to get all the statelets to act simultaneously and somehow also convince Austria, with their significant number of troops, to avoid intervention. This is a massive problem for the nationalist. It poses no obvious solution, but to hope and pray that many almost hopeless long shots may eventually win big. It is this, the only rational solution, that the few Italian nationalists on the peninsula opted for. It is this that would accidently lay the foundations for success, and it is these absolutely hopeless attempts that I want to discuss next.

There are two broad categorisations of these attempts. The first was the radical revolutions of the ‘Democrats’, whose attempts were utter, almost comedic, failures. The second of these was the ‘Moderates’ who seeked to create change through convincing those within existing state structures.

Both of these can be characterised as nationalist. Both, loosely, had the intention to create a more unified, or a completely unified peninsula. However, they differed in aims, leadership and strategy. Both were initially small in number, reflecting the small number of Italian nationalists on the peninsula at the time. Both, however, grew, and the achievement of both was to create a more fully formed vision of Italian nationalism that more Italians believed in.

Mazzini and the Democrats

Hopelessness and Sacrifice are the concepts that best describe Mazzini’s attempts at creating a unified Italy. Mazzini is best described as a romantic nationalist. He devoted everything to unifying Italy his way. He was a genuinely charismatic figure who did make significant ground for radical nationalists. He never got anywhere close to unifying Italy itself, but his position as someone who created the perception of the importance of Italy as a political issue was crucial.

Giuseppe Mazzini came from Genoa in northern Italy, and spent most of his life as a political exile. He effectively lead the burgeoning radical revolutionary group known, loosely, as the ‘Democrats’. Democrats confusingly refers to national self-determination, and not to attachment to the concept of Democracy in the way we think about Democracy. As mentioned earlier, ‘Democracy’ and nationalism in the 19th Century were seen to be relatively close concepts, and so the name-scheme should not be seen as irrational. Throughout the 1820s, there had been attempts by some to overthrow the existing regimes and replace them with something more Napoleonic. Those pushing for this were primarily members of the secret and shady organisations known as the Carbonari. These were hangovers from the Napoleonic regime, and their aims were not necessarily clear. They tended to want a more liberal state, had loose commitments to something more national, but largely were neither sufficiently unified nor sufficiently strong to pose any real perceived threat to existing regimes.

With Mazzini, came a dose of energy and organisation into these lacklustre organisations. His organisation – ‘Young Italy’ – was a decisive break from the Carbonari era. With this, he founded something new, and with it came a new ideology – precise, clear and ambitious – that sought relatively specific objectives. His ideology fitted with its times. It was an incredibly romantic ideology that emphasised mysticism and a utopian God-ordained goal. Mazzini saw nations as the units which God had put humans in. It was the duty of humans to free themselves through insurrection and personal sacrifice to achieve this end-goal. Italy, according to Mazzini, was God’s chosen nation, and as a result it was incredibly vital for the goal of Italian unification to be achieved. Achieving ‘Italy’ wasn’t for you, no, it was for God. Even more than this, it was your duty towards him.

The insurrections themselves, inspired by Mazzini, were dismal failures. Almost all can be described in painfully similar terms. Usually the ‘revolutionaries’ would be some group of romantic youths, with some informal or formal correspondence with Mazzini. They would attempt to rouse the local population. They would fail, and they would then be arrested. Most famously, the Bandiera Brothers led around 20 men to undertake one of these hopeless revolutions in 1844. They landed in Southern Italy, and were quickly arrested, brought to trial and killed.

The significance, however, did not lie in the revolutions themselves. These political events were hard to ignore. The loose sense that ‘progress’ meant something vague, liberal and potentially national as with the Carbonari, was clarified significantly. With the political dominance of radicalism by Mazzini, things had changed. Progress was increasingly looked at in relation to nationalism. Nationalism seemed politically relevant, something current and more importantly, something that you need to factor into your political considerations of the future. A good example, is the Bandiera Brothers. The reason that it is such an oft-cited example of Mazzini’s influence on nationalism is because it caused quite the stir at the time. The fact that these Brothers were willing to give up everything in the hope of achieving Italian Unification gave a misleading impression to the Italian political world of the scale and danger of the threat. This would help galvanise support for nationalism among some in the political elite of Italy. Although there was still some ambiguity over what those who supported nationalism wanted, now there was at least one politically obvious path that support could be channelled into. In this way, Mazzini was partly formative of the culturally Italian elite that would be crucial in the creation of Italy.

What’s more, Mazzini’s methods posed an explicit threat to the existing order. The threat of revolution, whether it was real or perceived, would in turn become a major, if not the major, political motivator of the key events in Italian Unification. The fact that Mazzini’s movement was perceived as a threat meant that political actors tried to pre-empt and control this threat. In doing so, they in fact would further the cause of the movement they were seeking to hinder.

The Moderates

We should not overstate the importance of Mazzini, however. Mazzini was no doubt important in the creation of this all-important culturally and politically Italian elite, but he was not the only figure influential in creating it. In fact, although Mazzini probably should be recognised as significant, the development of a largely popular elite occurred as a result of other factors. Mazzini helped focus the mind on the question of Italy – however, this in itself was insufficient to create a broad cultural elite. The impetus for this came elsewhere. It came from a grouping loosely defined as the ‘Moderates’. The ‘Moderates’, as opposed to the ‘Democrats’ were a loosely affiliated group of individuals who pushed for change within the existing order. They tended to do this through publishing books, spreading new ideas and putting pressure on governments to reform. Often, they consisted of a mix of liberals and nationalists, and they were often less wedded to the complete achievement of all their goals.

‘Moderate’ desire for change cannot be as easily chronologically placed as Mazzini was. From the early 1810s, there had always been circles of intellectuals who pushed for further reform in Italy. Their role, however, gained real significance by the 1830s and 1840s. Circles of intellectuals postulated new ideas about what should be done in Italy. The discussion was truly Italian, and belonged to a cultural and political strata near the top of society. Entwined with the desire for change was a notion of ‘progress’. This, loosely, is the idea that history moves forward, when we move forward, we get a better politics, better society, better economy and better quality of life. ‘Progress’ to many seemed like an unstoppable historical reality, impossible to resist and something to be embraced. For many in Italian society, the notion that states should accept the inevitability of this force, and use it to get Italy to the top of the hierarchy of nations was the key motivator. The sense that Italy had been left behind in the dust acted to galvanise political change.

Key among the ‘Moderates’ were Vincenzo Gioberti and Cesare Balbo. Both published books on what should be done and how to go about it. Gioberti wanted a federative Italian state under the Presidency of the Pope. Balbo, in contrast, wanted to persuade Austria to leave the peninsula through offering them compensation for their Italian territories in the Balkans. Both these schemes were relatively hopeless, and relied on a fundamental shift in the political priorities of parties across the peninsula. It is indicative of the strength of the state system on the peninsula that this was the case. There was no obvious path to unity for the developing cultural elite.

However, what is important to note here is the fact that something did change as a result of the efforts of the ‘Moderates’. This is that, increasingly, there was a cultural elite across Italy that saw Italy as the community which it most strongly identifies with. Both major publications by the two authors in the 1840s on the question of Italy sold across the peninsula. Gioberti’s work sold 80,000 copies in 5 years. These books, and others like them - of which there were many - were critical. They began focusing the attention of an elite onto Italian questions, giving colour and structure to the idea of Italy. People were starting to think about Italy in national terms as Italy became the community which some at the very top identified with. This started to break down that problem that I mentioned at the very start. Although the cultural and political elites continued to identify strongly with their existing political communities, it was now conceivable to think otherwise. Increasingly, there was a general movement across the peninsula in the way people thought about the community with which they identified. This was slow, but it was undoubtedly a trend. It is in this context that we should see the emergence of the idea of Italy.

Conclusion

This is the real victory of the 1815-1848 period. The development of the idea of Italy was crucial for the creation of Italy. This was the precondition for real change. As I have set out at the beginning, the lack of a group of people that thought about ‘Italy’ made change impossible. Now, there was a weak, but growing, movement of people who thought otherwise. People who thought about general Italian problems and ways to solve them. It is through the joint efforts of the ‘Moderates’ and ‘Democrats’ that this was achieved.

The other thing that is worth noting is the growth in the perception of threat from Mazzini’s movement. The ‘Democrats’ seemed to pose a significant threat, conceivably the biggest one, to the political status quo in Italy. The performative and hopeless revolutions on the peninsula became strong imagery for the existing political order. They seemed to pose a big threat, they seemed to inspire potentially dangerous threats to the existing order. Although this threat was largely imaginary, given the inherent weaknesses of the movement, they made those in power both think and worry. In 1848, and 1860 this would have significant consequences for the peninsula.

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

L. Reeder - Italy in the Modern World