CHAPTER 1
Italy in the early nineteenth century
INTRODUCTION
In September 1870, the troops of King Victor Emmanuel
II of Italy entered Rome. Italian unification, the bringing together different states of the Italian peninsula under one government, was complete. The Risorgimento, the reawakening of Italy, had reached its climax. However, the creation of the new Italian state was neither inevitable nor had it been planned. Although Italian unification had taken place, there was little enthusiasm for the new state among the Italian people. In 1861, an Italian politician named Massimo d’Azeglio remarked to Victor Emmanuel:
‘Sir, we have made Italy. Now we must make Italians.’ The story of what follows is of how Italy was made, but it is also a story of division and the failure to ‘make Italians’.
THE STATES OF THE PENINSULA
Towards the end of the eighteenth century the peninsula of
Italy was home to a number of states.
The Kingdom of Sardinia (Piedmont)
From its capital city of Turin, the House of Savoy ruled this relatively poor part of Italy. Despite its poverty, successive rulers built up a strong army and governed with an effective civil service. The island of Sardinia was particularly backward and was sparsely populated. Until
1815, the important port of Genoa was part of the
Republic of Genoa. It was politically separate from the
Kingdom of Sardinia.
Lombardy and Venetia
In the 1790s, Lombardy was part of the Austrian Empire.
Its capital, Milan, was the second largest city of that empire. Lombardy was ruled by Austrian officials who acted in the name of the Austrian Emperor. However, they were given a fair degree of freedom to act as they saw fit.
8
Italian Unification 1815–70
KEY TERMS
Risorgimento Translated, the word means
‘reawakening’. As a historical term it has been used to describe the development of a national identity, a national sentiment, an awareness among Italians of a common culture. It should not be used to describe any movement for national unification, because there wasn’t one.
KEY PEOPLE
Victor Emmanuel II
(1820–78) was the king of
Piedmont from 1849 to 1861 and first king of Italy from
1861 to his death in 1878. He reigned as a constitutional monarch, bound by the
Statuto which was granted by his father Charles Albert in
1848. He made a number of important decisions in his reign, such as the appointment of Count Camillo Cavour as
Prime Minister of Piedmont in
1852 or the decision to support Garibaldi’s expedition in 1860.
Massimo d’Azeglio
(1798–1866) was an artist, writer and, from 1849 to
1852, Prime Minister of
Piedmont. Unlike most northern Italians, he travelled to other parts of the peninsula. However, he was no different from most northerners in his contempt for the south. He commented that the unification of the north of Italy with the
Kingdom of Naples was like
‘going to bed with someone who has smallpox’.
AUSTRIA
SWITZERLAND
Y
VO
SA
Como
Verona
Milan
Peschiera
Po
Mantua
PIEDMONT
NICE
Legnago
ISTRIA
Venice
a
agn
Rom
Florence
Monaco
DALMATIA
Ancona
Livorno TUSCANY
Marche
PAPAL STATES
ELBA
OTTOMAN EMPIRE
Bologna
N
Liguria
A
PARMA
DE
FRANCE
VENETIA
LOMBARDY
Turin
M
O
The main regions of
Italy at the end of the eighteenth century.
Adriatic
Sea
Umbria
CORSICA
Abruzzi
Rome
NAPLES
Naples
SARDINIA
Ty r r h e n i a n
Sea
Cagliari
Calabria
Palmero
SICILY
Mediterranean
Sea
N
The Austrian army underpinned imperial rule. It maintained a number of military strongholds known as the
Quadrilateral, which dominated the plain of the fertile Po
Valley.
Republic of Venice.
Otherwise known as the Republic of St Mark, this had been a powerful state in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries because its merchants dominated trade in the
Mediterranean. By the 1790s, the republic had lost its importance as a trading power, although not its architectural or artistic splendour.
The Central Duchies
This refers to the independent states of Tuscany, Modena and Parma. Tuscany had been governed by part of the
Italy in the early nineteenth century
9
Habsburg family, the House of Lorraine, since the 1730s.
Relatively prosperous, Tuscany had been at the heart of the
Renaissance from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries.
The city of Florence (the capital of Tuscany) became home to artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.
Modena and Parma were separated from Tuscany by the
Apennine Mountains. These two states had a certain political independence – although, like Tuscany, they were within the sphere of Austrian influence.
The Kingdom of Naples
Ruled by the Bourbon family, the Kingdom of Naples was the poorest region of Italy. It was dominated by Naples, the largest city in Italy at the end of the eighteenth century with a population of 400,000. However, most of the population of Naples, and indeed the whole of the kingdom, lived in desperate poverty. In the countryside, the social structure and economic system was unchanged from medieval times. The land was owned by a few absentee landlords and the Church. The kings of Naples were absolute rulers who maintained large armies in order to control the people. As late as 1847, the writer Luigi
Settembrini wrote of the Kingdom of Naples: ‘No state in
Europe is in a worse condition than ours…In the country that is said to be the garden of Europe, the people die of hunger and are in a state worse than beasts.’
THE IMPACT OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, 1789
The French Revolution of 1789 was to have a profound effect on Europe. Its impact on the development of Italy should not be underestimated. The revolution in France led to the absolute monarchy being swept away, and the introduction of political and administrative reform based, at least in theory, on the idea of liberty. Such ideas frightened the rulers of much of the rest of Europe. In
1792, Prussia and Austria launched into war on revolutionary France. This affected Italy because of the
Austrian control of Lombardy and its considerable influence over many of the other Italian states. As a result, in May 1796, the young French General Napoleon
10
Italian Unification 1815–70
KEY TERMS
Renaissance The term given to a period of European history from the early fourteenth to the late sixteenth centuries. It comes from the French word for
‘rebirth’. Originally, it referred to the revival of the values and artistic styles of classical antiquity during that period, especially in Italy.
KEY PEOPLE
Napoleon Bonaparte
(1769–1821) Napoleon I,
Emperor of France from
1804–14 and again in 1815.
A brilliant General, he also introduced a number of administrative reforms in
France that have lasted until today. KEY PLACES
Papal States Stretching from the cities of Ferrara and
Bologna in the north down to
Benevento in the south, the
Papal States dominated central
Italy. They were ruled by the head of the Catholic Church, who resided in Rome (for centuries the centre of the
Catholic world). The Pope was not just a spiritual leader, he also had temporal power
(see Key Term on page 00). To most Popes, control of the
Papal States was considered essential to the protection of papal independence. However, the Popes did not have a significant army and relied on
Catholic countries to protect them militarily if required.
K E Y E V E N TS
Peace of Campo Formio,
1798 The Treaty of Campo
Formio ended Napoleon’s
Italian campaign. Its main significance was that the
Austrians recognised the existence of the Cisalpine
Republic.
Bonaparte invaded northern Italy with the intention of sweeping out the Austrians. A series of French victories left
Napoleon in control of most of northern Italy and from
1796 to 1799 he introduced a number of political changes:
• The regions of Lombardy, Modena, Bologna, Romagna and Ferrara were united into the Cisalpine Republic.
This was administered on a model similar to that in
France, with five directors and a legislature (Parliament).
Unlike the French model however the legislature was appointed by Napoleon.
• The Republic of Genoa was transformed into the
Republic of Liguria under French control.
• Until 1798, Piedmont was allowed to keep its monarchy, but lost Savoy and Nice to France. However, in 1799
Piedmont was annexed to France.
• In 1796, the French had invaded the Papal States, but it wasn’t until 1798 that they intervened in Rome and deposed the Pope, Pius VI. A revolutionary Roman
Republic was set up under French control. The
Republic’s constitution was modelled on that of the
French.
• In 1797, Napoleon invaded Venice but handed it over to the Austrians as part of the Peace of Campo Formio of
October 1798 in return for territory in Belgium.
French interest and Italian reaction
Some Italians, such as the patrioti, welcomed French rule.
The patrioti supported the attacks on Church privileges and the destruction of old monarchies that took place after
1796. However, other Italians objected. In Naples in 1799, a revolt against French rule ended in the slaughter of thousands of middle-class supporters of the new order. In
December 1798, a coalition of anti-French states was formed to push the French out of Italy. Known as the
Second Coalition, it planned for Russian and Austrian armies to invade Italy. In April 1799, they invaded and defeated the French in a series of battles to the end of the year. Despite this temporary setback for the French, it did not end their interest in Italy. Napoleon I had been away in
Italy in the early nineteenth century
11
Egypt securing French control of parts of North Africa. On his return to France in late 1799, he seized political power by declaring himself First Consul and planned a new campaign in Italy. In May 1800, Napoleon led a large army across the Great St Bernard Pass and into northern Italy.
He entered Milan, restored the Cisalpine Republic and moved rapidly to face a far larger Austrian army. At the
Battle of Marengo on 14 June 1800, Napoleon won a great victory. This victory ensured French control of northern
Italy for the next fourteen years. Again, the political map of the peninsula was redrawn.
• The Central Duchies were amalgamated in 1801 into the
Kingdom of Etruria, which was eventually annexed to
France.
• In 1805, the Cisalpine Republic became the Kingdom of
Italy and Napoleon proclaimed himself its king.
Napoleon chose as his viceroy his stepson, Eugene de
Beauharnais. In the same year the north-west regions of
Italy (including Piedmont, Parma and Liguria) were incorporated into France and ruled as French départements. The importance of this was that these regions were exposed to the administrative reforms introduced in France, known as the Code Napoleon.
• Between 1805 and 1808, Napoleon’s armies took over different parts of the Papal States. Then, in 1809,
Napoleon declared that Rome was to be the ‘Second
City of the Empire’ that is, it would be incorporated into the French Empire. Pope Pius VII was to become a prisoner. Napoleon was keen to give titles and land to as many of his relatives as he could. From 1806 the Kingdom of Naples was ruled by his brother Joseph, who became king. All feudal rights were abolished, a policy enforced by Joachim
Murat. Sicily was not conquered by the French and was dominated by the British, who encouraged the introduction of a constitution in 1812 to be drawn up on
British lines (in other words, there was a Parliament with two Houses and a constitutional monarchy).
12
Italian Unification 1815–70
KEY TERMS
Code Napoleon Under the
Code, feudalism (see key term on page 22) was abolished and equality before the law established. KEY PEOPLE
Joachim Murat
(1767–1815) A flamboyant cavalry officer who succeeded
Joseph as King of Naples in
1808. He married one of
Napoleon’s sisters, Caroline
Bonaparte.
Charles Bonaparte = Maria Laetitia Ramolini
(1746–85)
(1750–1836)
Joseph
(1) Josephine = Napoleon I = (2) Marie
King of Naples, de Beauharnais
Emperor, 1804
Louise of
1806
(1763–1814)
(1769–1821)
Austria
King of Spain,
(1791–1847)
1808 (1768–1844)
Lucien
President of
Council
(1775–1840)
Marie Anne
(Elisa)
Grand Duchess of Tuscany
(1777–1820)
Louis
King of
Holland
m. Hortense
(1778–1846)
Pauline
Duchess of
Guastalla
m. Prince
Borghese
(1780–1825)
Caroline
m. Joachim
Murat
King of
Naples
(1782–1839)
Jerome
King of
Westphalia
m. Catherine of Württemberg
(1784–1860)
Prince Peter
(1815–81)
(Stepchildren by Josephine)
Prince Roland
(1858–1924)
Augusta =
Eugene
Hortense
Napoleon II of Bavaria Viceroy of Italy m. Louis King of Rome
(1788–1851)
Duke of
King of
(1811–32)
Leuchtenberg
Holland
(1781–1824) (1783–1837)
Josephine
m. Oscar I of Sweden
(1807–76)
Eugénie
(1808–47)
August
m. Maria
Queen of
Portugal
(1810–35)
Amalie
m. Pedro IV of Portugal
(1812–73)
The House of Bonaparte.
Louis
King of
Holland
(1804–31)
Louis Napoleon
Napoleon III
m. Eugénie Montijo
(1808–73)
Princess Marie
m. Prince George of Greece
(1882–1962)
Théolinde
m. Count of
Württemberg
(1814–57)
Louis Napoleon
Prince Imperial
(1856–79)
Maximilian
Duke of
Leuchtenberg
(1817–52)
Prince Victor Jerome
Louis
m. Princess Clementine (1864–1932) of Belgium
(1862–1926)
Marie Clotilde
(1912–96)
Louis Napoleon
(1914–97)
Prince Napoleon
Joseph m. Clotilde of Sardinia
(1882–9)
Marie Laetitia
m. Amadeo
Duke of Aosta
King of Spain
(1866–1926)
Humbert
Count of Salemi
(1889–1918)
IMPACT OF NAPOLEONIC RULE IN ITALY
Under French rule, many Italians experienced a transformation in how they were governed. Instead of a patchwork of customs and feudal laws that had dominated the running of so many of the states of Italy, they enjoyed the benefits of a new, more efficient system. The French brought with them a fairer Code of Law. State officials administered parts of Italy under a unified and clearly defined system of rules. The Code forbade torture and stated that all people were equal in the eyes of the law.
Even when the French were expelled from Italy and their laws repealed, it was difficult for many of the restored rulers to turn back the clock.
French rule sped up the process of the rise of the middle professional classes. In most regions of Italy before the
1790s, land was mainly owned by the aristocracy and the
Church. However, Napoleonic rule meant the sale of large amounts of Church land. The peasantry did not benefit from this land sale because they could not afford to buy the land. Instead, the land was purchased by the commercial and professional middle classes. Indeed, many of the later leaders of the process of political unification
Italy in the early nineteenth century
13
such as Count Camillo Cavour came from families that made their fortunes in this period. Land sale also strengthened the position of members of the nobility, who were able to increase the size of their estates by buying
Church land.
Popularity of French rule
The influence of the French revolution and the period of
French dominance in Italy resulted in the emergence of secret societies. The societies were formed to plot against the French. When the French left Italy in 1814, they plotted against the restored governments. The stated aims of the largest society, the Carbonari, included the rejection of absolutist government and the protection of the rights of the people. After 1815, the secret societies were able to keep the idea of political reform alive even though change did not necessarily happen as a result of their activities.
However, French rule was by no means universally popular.
• The demands of war had meant that taxation was high.
• Many Italians were conscripted into the army of the
Kingdom of Italy, which, by 1810, was some 50,000 strong. • Many Italians fought all over Europe for Napoleon and for the ideas that revolutionary France stood for. The idea that there should be a strong, secular (non-religious) centralised state would influence future generations of
Italians.
Although demands for Italian unification were not strong in the opening years of the century, there had been a
Kingdom of Italy, albeit one controlled from Paris.
The years of French dominance witnessed a serious attack on the Church as an institution. Although the Church was fully restored in 1815, the tradition of anti-clericalism was one that lingered.
14
Italian Unification 1815–70
KEY PEOPLE
Count Camillo Cavour
(1810–61) A Piedmontese statesman. He was prime minister from 1852 to 1859, during which time he modernised the economy.
Cavour resigned as Prime
Minister over the issue of the
Treaty of Villafranca (see page
83).
KEY TERMS
The Carbonari The origins of this society are unclear, but translated the name means
‘charcoal burners’. Every member of the society was sworn to secrecy in a special initiation ceremony. The
Carbonari were committed to the principles of the rights of the people, and were prepared to use violence and revolution as the means by which it could achieve its aims.
Although the Carbonari society was an international organisation, it was strongest in Naples where it had perhaps as many as 60,000 members. Absolutist government
This occurs when a ruler rules without constraints such as a
Parliament.
AFTERMATH OF THE NAPOLEONIC WARS
KEY PEOPLE
Prince Klemens
Metternich (1773–1859)
An Austrian statesman. He was a powerful force in
Europe between 1815 and
1848.
KEY TERMS
Liberals They believed that the best form of government was one that protected the people. Most liberals believed that this was best achieved through the creation of a
Parliament that was elected by some of the people. They argued for a constitution that enshrined rights and liberties such as the freedom of speech.
Liberals did not go as far as radicals who believed that all people should have the vote, that there should be farreaching social reform and redistribution of power.
Nationalists They believed that nation states should be formed by people with a shared culture and identity. In
Italy in 1815, there were few nationalists; most people identified with their locality such as Naples or Rome rather than their culture.
In 1815, the Napoleonic wars came to an end. The French
Emperor Napoleon was banished to the island of St Helena in the Atlantic Ocean. Meanwhile, the victors of the war,
Britain, Austria, Russia and Prussia, began to draw up a settlement that they hoped would ensure peace in Europe.
Their task was not easy. French rule over much of Europe had seen boundaries redrawn and much political and social upheaval. The aim of the peacemakers was to return
Europe to the days of political stability and to prevent
France from ever causing such turmoil again.
One of the most influential peacemakers in 1815 was the
Austrian foreign minister Prince Klemens Metternich.
Indeed, he had considerable impact over Italian affairs for the next 30 years. In 1847, Prince Metternich commented that Italy was a mere ‘geographical expression’. By this he meant that the idea of an Italian state was a fanciful one.
For centuries the Italian peninsula was home to a number of distinct states with their own customs, governments, cultures and languages. In fact, the Italian language was only spoken by around 2.5 per cent of the population. The rest spoke in dialect.
The settlement of 1815, known as the Treaty of Vienna, reflected the diversity of Italy. Primarily, however, the
Treaty reflected the wishes of Metternich and the desires of
Austria, which now had even greater control over Italian affairs. This would be a most important development.
Many of the demands for political change in Italy after
1815 were not necessarily from a desire to unite Italy but rather from a desire to destroy Austrian control and influence. In 1815, Metternich’s desire was to restore the old pre-1796 order and this fact was reflected in the terms of the Vienna Settlement. He wished to impose a conservative settlement thereby crushing the hopes of liberals and nationalists across Europe.
Italy in the early nineteenth century
15
THE TREATY OF VIENNA AND ITS IMPACT
The Treaty of Vienna had a considerable impact on the following states.
The Kingdom of Sardinia (Piedmont)
The Vienna treaty recognised the restoration of the House of Savoy as the rightful rulers of Piedmont. In 1814,
Victor Emmanuel I returned to Piedmont and immediately began to restore the absolutist state. The Code
Napoleon was repealed, as were various rights such as free and open trials. No laws passed after 1800 were recognised and the Church was restored to its pre-Napoleon privileged status. One important change introduced at Vienna was that the port and state of Genoa was granted to the House of Savoy.
Lombardy and Venice
Austrian dominance of Italian political life was assured by the return of Lombardy to Austrian control in 1814.
However, it was strengthened by the recognition at Vienna of Austria’s annexation of Venice.
The Papal States
By the terms of the Treaty of Vienna, Pope Pius VII was restored to his position as spiritual and temporal ruler of the Papal States. The Code Napoleon was abolished in most parts of the Papal States and the papal legal codes re-established. However, such a move was not universal. In
Emilia-Romagna the Code Napoleon remained. Austrian influence over the region was considerably increased by the fact that Austrian armed forces were to be stationed in the
Papal States. These forces were a sign that Austria would, if necessary, use force to protect the conservative settlement imposed on Italy.
The Central Duchies
The Treaty of Vienna left the Central Duchies firmly under
Austrian influence. Grand Duke Ferdinand III, brother of the Austrian Emperor, became ruler of Tuscany. However, this did not mean that he was as conservative or as repressive as some of the other Restoration rulers. Indeed,
Ferdinand and his first minister, Victor Fossombroni,
16
Italian Unification 1815–70
KEY PEOPLE
Victor Emmanuel I
(1759–1824), King of
Sardinia (1802–21) A conservative monarch, Victor
Emmanuel was King of
Piedmont from 1806 to 1821.
For the first eight years of his reign, Piedmont was under the control of Napoleonic
France, but Victor Emmanuel was restored to the throne in
1814. In March 1821, he was forced to abdicate in favour of his brother Charles Felix.
KEY TERMS
Freedom of expression
The Austrians did not want
Italians to have freedom of expression. Therefore, most organisations seeking change either met in secret or had to go abroad. In Tuscany,
Ferdinand allowed the journal
Antologia to be set up in
1821. Antologia soon became one of the few means by which Italian thinkers could express themselves in public.
KEY PEOPLE
Marie Louise (1791–1847)
Daughter of the Austrian emperor Francis I. She became
Napoleon’s wife in 1810 and was to remain so until his death in 1821.
Ferdinand I (1751–1825)
Ferdinand I was made King of
Naples in 1759 at the age of nine when his father, Charles
IV, became King of Spain. He was forced to flee his kingdom in 1798 when it was conquered by the French.
Ferdinand married Maria
Carolina the daughter of the
Austrian Empress Marie
Teresa. Maria dominated the marriage and the direction of government policy.
KEY TERMS
Malaria An often fatal fever that is carried and passed on by mosquitoes.
improved education, set up hospitals and food relief during the outbreak of typhus in 1815–16, and allowed freedom of expression, which was not allowed in the rest of Italy.
The new ruler of Parma, Marie Louise of Bourbon-Parma, was equally broadminded. She scrapped the Code
Napoleon in 1820, but replaced it with something similar.
This was no surprise given the fact that she had been
Napoleon’s wife! In Modena, Duke Francis IV was far more repressive, reinstating the Jesuit order’s influence over the lives of the Modenese.
The Kingdom of Naples
The Bourbon King, Ferdinand I, was restored to his throne in 1815 with vague promises of maintaining some of the legacy of French and British influence in Naples and
Sicily respectively. However, this was not to be the case.
The Church was restored to its position of power and authority. Many of the liberal projects introduced by the
French such as road building and extending education were abandoned. In Sicily in 1816, the British-inspired constitution was destroyed; much to the frustration of many of the nobility who had enjoyed the power it had given them.
ECONOMIC ISSUES
Land
The issue of land ownership was the foremost issue of the day. In The Italian Risorgimento (1998), Martin Clark asserts that, throughout the nineteenth century, ‘the real political issue was not constitutional liberty, nor independence, nor unification, but land’. As opportunities for investment in industry were so weak for much of the period in question, so land was the main form of investment. There was a significant difference in the patterns of land cultivation between the north and south.
• The soil in the south was inferior in quality and the region was crippled by malaria. Land was owned by absentee landlords and rented out by peasant farmers under a system known as the latifundia.
Italy in the early nineteenth century
17
• Throughout Italy and especially in the south, many were landless forced to work as labourers, but suffering from chronic underemployment.
• The period of Napoleonic rule had seen the abolition of feudal laws and the sale of Church land, which further encouraged land speculation. However, this did not result in a significant broadening of the range of people who owned land.
• In Piedmont there was more of a tradition of peasant landownership than elsewhere on the peninsula. In the middle of the century there were around 800,000 estates in Piedmont, although it should be stressed that many of these were small.
Throughout the nineteenth century, changes to land ownership and how the land was exploited made matters considerably worse for the landless. Many depended on common land for fuel and food. In the 1830s, this land was sold off by local councils, enclosed and common rights lost. By the mid-1860s, about a quarter of a million acres had been sold. The critical issue was who would benefit from the sale of common land? Not surprisingly, it was sold to those close to the local prefects, councillors and mayors. Once they had assumed ownership of this land they exploited it. The increasing demand for wood in the
1840s, in particular from the railway and shipbuilding industries, led to widespread deforestation. As a result, landslides and the erosion of topsoil led to the creation of swamps, which made the malaria worse. It is little wonder that peasants in the south were in a constant state of unrest. Industrial development
In no sense could Italy be described as being industrialised by 1860. There were signs of industrial development in certain regions, but the base of this development was narrow, being almost exclusively focused in textiles and light industry. There were a number of factors that hindered economic development in Italy and made any development there uneven.
18
Italian Unification 1815–70
• The Apennines, which form the physical spine of the country, acted as a barrier to transport communication between east and the west of the country.
• The political divisions made for localised rather than nationally based economies.
• The Restoration of 1815 reinforced this localism and generally had a negative effect on industry.
• Tariffs were re-imposed on trade between Italian states.
• Many regions suffered from economic depression.
However, the period after 1815 saw the beginning of industrial growth. Most importantly, machines were imported from (primarily) Britain, France and Switzerland, which led to the creation of a factory-based textile industry.
(In 1810, for example, the entrepreneur John Muller imported the machinery necessary for cotton manufacture.)
However, there were factors that limited industrial growth, not least of which was that Italy relied on Britain for coal imports. Piedmont Therefore, although cotton, wool and silk industries grew steadily, in 1844 there were only 114,000 industrial workers in Piedmont. But at least the
Piedmontese did not suffer from the impact of protectionism that hampered the industrial growth of their
Lombard and Venetian neighbours.
Lombardy and Venice There was no sense in which the regions of northern Italy were integrated industrially.
Indeed, because of Austrian domination of Lombardy and
Venetia the regions’ industries were in direct competition with those of its neighbours.
• The Lombard cotton industry was the more advanced because Lombard entrepreneurs running businesses organised their industry in ways that lowered the cost of importing raw cotton.
• There is little doubt that Habsburg bureaucracy restricted industrial growth in Lombardy.
• It is also clear that, in Lombardy, the industrial economy was not broad enough to avoid severe depression. Rather, it was concentrated in a number of urban centres such as
Milan with the effect that when there was a depression,
Italy in the early nineteenth century
19
the impact on the industrial regions was considerable.
Silk was the most important industry in Lombardy. But even by the middle of the century there were only around 4,400 silk looms, which were based primarily in
Como and Milan. When depression struck in 1847, there was widespread suffering.
• Even by 1871, the extent of an industrialised economy was limited, with just over 15,000 ‘workshops’ – a term that could include factories. Industry was still very much based at home and mostly linked to agricultural production. The South If industrial growth was slow in the north, it was virtually non-existent in the south. In Italy in the Age of the Risorgimento 1790–1870 (1983), Harry Hearder suggests: ‘Little needs to be said about industry in the
Kingdom of Naples because there was little.’ Railways had been built in and around Naples in the 1830s.
Additionally, there were some industrial enterprises in the city, mainly metal and textile based. But the south suffered from a number of factors that hindered its development.
• There were few entrepreneurs with skills or capital to invest and few skilled workers.
• Also, industry was artisan-based in small workshops rather than factories, for the simple reason there was little natural source of power with which to run machinery. • Despite these problems, silk and other textiles industries were protected by a system of high tariffs and relatively low taxation.
CONCLUSION
In 1815 although French rule had ended it did not appear that the regions which made up the Italian peninsula were moving closer to becoming a unified Italian state:
• The Vienna Settlement failed to wipe out all traces of
Napoleonic rule in Italy.
• Austrian influence over Italy was considerable and
Metternich’s insistence that all traces of liberal government be suppressed was generally followed.
20
Italian Unification 1815–70
• There was little, if no, agitation for a form of united
Italy. However, there were a number of Italians who hoped for an end to absolutist monarchy.
• The secret societies in particular were prepared to act in the name of change.
• There was significant economic disparity between the different regions of the Italian peninsular.
ACTIVITY
Enquiry
Study Sources A and B.
Compare these Sources as evidence for the strength of desire to restore the Ancien Regime in the Italian states in 1815.
Source A: An appeal in 1814 by Milanese aristocrat and
liberal Count Federico Confalonieri to British Foreign
Minister Lord Castlereagh. Confalonieri was a liberal who had opposed Napoleonic rule but was desperate to avoid the return of Austrian domination.
If our country has never enjoyed the advantages of political and national life, in the last twenty years it has learnt to desire them. We have intelligence, energy, passion, a wider experience of political matters and a greater love of our country and we have learnt to fight. On the one hand, we are no longer the same people who, twenty years ago were happy and lethargic under the paternal rule of Austria; on the other, while I should not like to be too bold in my assertion, I fear that perhaps the
Austrian government is no longer the same. Moreover, it will not escape you that nature, language and customs limit all countries and impose boundaries and special laws on them.
The history of the whole past century has shown how poorly
Austria has been able to protect our land.
From ‘Rapporto dei deputati del regno d’Italia presso gli
Allati’. In U. Foscolo, Della sevitu dell’Itaial, 1815,
Source B: A report from Cardinal Ercole Consalvi to Pius
VII dated May 1815. The Cardinal is reporting back on a discussion held with Prince Metternich about the restoration of Papal rule in central Italy.
Italy in the early nineteenth century
21
Starting as always from his principle that we are being given the Legations [Ferrara, Bologna, Romagna], not having them restored to us, the Prince [Metternich] told me that Ferrara is being given [to the Papacy] on condition that Austrian garrisons should be stationed both there and at Comacchio. I objected to this on the grounds that the Pope was an independent sovereign but this objection was not considered valid since Austria as donor is clearly allowed to attach rules to her gift. We have decided to call these towns “frontier fortresses”. The Prince also argued that the three provinces [of the
Legations]…accustomed for about twenty-five years now to a system of government very different to Papal rule...could not be brought under the old system of government. In my reply I established that whatever the Holy Father was obliged to do in the three Legations he would have to do in the rest of his states. The Prince agreed, and so this was ruled out.
FS Orlandini, Opera edite e postume, vol. V, ed.
Florence, 1850
22
Italian Unification 1815–70 