There is no denying that the power that Austrian Empire held from 1820 and 1848 was influential and was one of the reasons the Italian revolutionaries failed. This is why some argue that the main reason of the failed attempt to unite Italy was the brute force of the Austrian military and navy. However, many argue that this was merely one factor of many. Some argue that the reason that Italy’s revolutionaries failed was due to the geographical fragmentation of Italy and the fact that this consequently leads to parochialism within these individual sectors. However, the argument that carries the greatest weight is that the individuals who led these revolts and were at the forefront of the revolutionary movements were not united themselves in how they wanted Italy to unite.
France promote the unification of Italy in a large extent. However there were other countries such as Prussia, Britain, and Austria. Also there were significant figures who promote the unification of Italy such as Garibaldi and Cavour To start with France has not always been positive factor for the unification process. France in 1848 sent an army of about 20.000 men to destroy the roman republic. At Plombieres meeting of 1858 Cavour and Napoleon III agreed to work together which the agreement was Nice and Savoy are going to belong to France(so there would be no complete unification) and fought the war of 1859 against Austria.
January 2012 Why did Piedmont become, and remain, the driving force towards closer Italian unity in the years 1848–61? To what extent can Italy be described as completely unified by 1870? June 2012 How far do you agree that the failure of Italian revolutionaries in the years 1820–49 was primarily due to a lack of popular support? How far do you agree that Cavour made the most significant individual contribution to the process of Italian unification in the years 1852–70? January 2013 How significant was
There was a domino effect after this initially desire:Bavaria wanted Bohemia lands, the King of France sought the Austrian Netherlands, and the Spanish longed for the Austrian territories in Italy. As all of this came about so soon the allies of Austria (Britain, Holland, and Russia) were getting wary of the country. This came to the end of the War of the Spanish
After ww1 there were a lot of implications such as Italy not getting what it wanted in the treaty of st Germaine the idea of a mutilated victory and whether or not liberal state could claim Italy’s rewards. In 1915 when Italy joined the war on the side of the British they were promised territory such as dalmatia and south tyrol. They were also many colonies however
The fact that Austria had influenced Italy so much before the revolutions contributed hugely to the failure of the revoltutions. After the Vienna conference in 1815 Austria was granted a lot of power in Italy, this gave them an incentive to stop the revolutions as their authority would be threatened and they would lose out on a lot of things like trade. Mettinich, the chancellor of Italy said that ‘Italian affairs do not exist’ which shows his determination to stopping Italian nationalists. An example of Austrians intervention was in Naples where after being asked for help from Ferdinand I, Mettinich sent Austrian troops in to restore order. Similarly, in Piedmont in 1821, where Charles Felix declared Charles Albert (the temporary monarch of Piedmont) a rebel and so exiled him to Tuscany and then appealed to Mettinich for help.
But throughout the 1930s towards WW2, the League of Nations is shown to be very weak; hence it couldn’t prevent the Abyssinia Crisis. In 1934 Mussolini attempted a coup with Austrian Nazis to overthrow President Dollfuss, however the plan failed and Dollfuss was murdered. At this point France and Italy formed an alliance which would guarantee Austria’s sovereignty. Two months later Mussolini learned of Germany’s rearmament program and began to grow suspicion of Hitler. During April 1915, the “Stresa Front” took place, which consisted of Britain, France and Italy; in which all three nations Criticised Hitler’s gamble in Austria and was reminded that his aggressive actions had breached the spirit of the Locarno Conference.
These tensions started to disrupt their dual alliance with Austria-Hungary, even with a ‘Blank Cheque’ being given to them. With the Kaiser believing that foreign policy and civil war was increasingly the same, it can be assumed that aggressive foreign policy may have been set to distract the German public away from things at home and more onto how to become a strong world power. A factor that both strengthens and weakens the argument of aggressive foreign policy being the reason for the outbreak of war in 1914 is that of encirclement. Source V mentions ‘They felt encircled not merely by the Triple Entente, but also by the forces of change.’ First of all, Germany became sceptical about the alliance between Britain, France and Russia, the Triple Entente, they thought it was not going to work and did not fear it until they tried to cause problems between France and Britain with the ownership of the Balkan islands, which was unsuccessful. When Germany realised that the entente was a
“A political movement of the right, characterized by the use of systematic violence against political opponents and by the presence of a dominant charismatic leader, that emerged after World War I in a number of European countries primarily Italy and Germany.” (The West and the World, page 476.) Before you can attempt to differentiate the fascist forms of government in Germany and Italy, it is important to recognize how they were similar. Both had similar viewpoints in the sense that they believed their respective countries were special and needed the global respect that they deserved. Germany felt isolated because they had to admit they were wrong in World War I and had to pay retributions for their actions. Italy felt that they wanted to regain the glory they possessed during ancient Rome and wished to create a 20th century Italian Empire in the Mediterranean.
In 1815 Italy was the country marked by the centuries of plundering attacks by foreign states, and then, in XVIII and early XIX century, by French and Austrian infulences. There was a long way separating the divided Italian states from unification of 1871. What citizens of those states needed were the strong political figures that would lead them to the consolidation. I'd like to concetrate on two of them - Giuseppe Garibaldi and Camillo Cavour. Two marginally different personalities, two different ideas of how should the future of Italy look like, and, therefore, different ways they followed to make those ideas come true.