From Etruscans and Romans to Modern Times - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 69

In the centuries before and after the Renaissance, Italy was a collection of jealous, some-
times warring sovereignties: kingdoms, dukedoms, and elite-run republics. If, as is some-
times said, a nation is an imagined community of those who share a language, a religion,
and a history, then Italy in the nineteenth century was a series of nations but not a unified
nation-state. In the south, the Kingdom of Naples ruled the “boot of Italy” and the island
of Sicily. The Papal State, whose monarch was the Pope, exercised sovereign control over
the center of Italy. Parma, Tuscany, Modena, and Lucca were independent states. In the
north, the Kingdom of Piedmont guarded its sovereignty against France and the expansion-
ist designs of Austria, which controlled the province of Lombardy and the Veneto, an Adri-
atic area once part of the Venetian empire.
But beginning with the American and French revolutions, a new ideology swept across
Europe. Its followers proclaimed that devotion to a unified nation-state was far more im-
portant than devotion to local rulers. To act on this belief, or even to discuss it, meant run-
ning the risk of arrest and torture by the secret police of Italy's many rulers. Those who
met in secret called themselves charbonieri — charcoal burners , solitary woodsmen who
cut trees in the forests and burned them to make charcoal. As the secret societies grew, their
movement took a more inclusive name, Risorgimento , “rising again”: the rising of revolu-
tionaries against foreign domination and against Italian tyrants.
In 1849 revolutionaries dethroned the Pope as Prince of the Papal State and established
the Republic of Rome. Tuscany soon followed suit. Then, ten years later, Modena, Parma,
and Lucca joined the ranks of republican Italy. But a collection of republics was not yet
a nation-state. For that to happen, a transcending leadership was needed. That role was
assumed by Victor Emmanuel II, King of Piedmont. Through his chief minister, Count
Cavour, Victor Emmanuel established a parliamentary regime and modernized his army.
Nationalist patriots flocked to his leadership. None was more important than Giuseppe
Garibaldi and his army of 10,000 patriots (the red shirts). In 1860 Garibaldi's army swept
through Sicily and routed the forces of the King of Naples. The King and Garibaldi met in
Naples and in 1861 proclaimed the Kingdom of Italy, a single nation-state whose writ ran
the length of Italy—except for the now-tiny Papal State of Latium and the Austrian-domin-
ated areas on the Adriatic Sea. Ten years later, military campaigns against Austria brought
the Adriatic stragglers into the fold. After almost 2,000 years, Italy was once again welded
into a single nation-state, its political system a constitutional monarchy.