The Unification of Italy
Learn about Italian unification — the Risorgimento movement that united the peninsula's fragmented states into a single nation by 1871.
The unification of Italy (1848–1871), known as the Risorgimento ('resurgence'), was the political movement that transformed the Italian peninsula from a patchwork of small states, foreign-ruled territories, and papal lands into a single nation-state. It was one of the defining achievements of 19th-century nationalism.
The movement drew on the intellectual currents of the Enlightenment and the revolutionary tradition of 1789. Giuseppe Mazzini provided the ideological vision of an Italian republic. Count Cavour, the prime minister of Piedmont-Sardinia, provided the diplomatic and political skill, manipulating alliances with France against Austria. And Giuseppe Garibaldi provided the military romance — his volunteer 'Thousand' conquered the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in a legendary campaign that captured the popular imagination.
The Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed in 1861, with the Piedmontese king Victor Emmanuel II as monarch. Venice was added in 1866 and Rome in 1870. But unification was incomplete in important ways. The south remained significantly poorer than the north — a divide that persists today. Millions of Italians did not speak the same language. And the new state faced the 'Roman Question' — the Pope's refusal to recognize the loss of his temporal power — that was not resolved until 1929.