The Risorgimento is a name which is given to the process whereby Italian unification occurred in the middle of the nineteenth century. The term itself transliterates as ‘Resurgence’ or ‘Rising Again’. For centuries Italy had been divided into dozens of small republics, duchies and kingdoms like Venice, the Papal State, Naples, Florence, Genoa and Pidemont-Sardinia. Unification was achieved through a series of wars fought between 1848 and 1870, resulting in the emergence of the Kingdom of Italy. It also triggered a period of intense mass-migration which would see in excess of twelve million Italians leave the country between 1860 and 1920 and upwards of fifteen million. The causes of this were multi-faceted, with over-population already being a problem in the highly urbanized Italy prior to the nineteenth century, while some of the economic policies which the new Italian state engaged in also drove emigration from the south of Italy and Sicily in the decades that followed. A great majority of people with Italian ancestry in countries like the United States, Argentina and Brazil have ancestors who first arrived to those countries in the decades after the Risorgimento.[1]
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Risorgimento chronology of events
Italy had become one of the most politically divided parts of Europe during the Middle Ages. This was owing to the fragmentation of the Holy Roman Empire during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which covered large parts of northern and central Italy at the time, and the fact that no unitary power such as had emerged in England, France and Spain in the shape of the Kingdom of Wessex, the Franks and the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon in those three jurisdictions had managed to unify the country in the medieval era. Instead in Italy there were at times dozens of small states such as the trading republics of Genoa and Venice, small principalities like the duchies of Milan, Urbino and Parma and the Papal State in Rome and the surrounding region. A process of consolidation was underway between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, with the Grand Duchy of Florence, for instance, absorbing some of its smaller Tuscan neighbors, but the process was still far from complete.[2]
A number of developments between the 1790s and the 1840s created a desire for a united Italy in some circles. Firstly, the French Revolutionary Wars had seen a number of larger Italian republics created in northern and central Italy, albeit ones dominated by France. On top of this there was a growing surge of liberal nationalist sentiment across Europe in the nineteenth century which fuelled thoughts of a united Italy. Thirdly, the dominance of the Veneto and the Plain of Lombardy in the north and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in the south by the French royal House of Bourbon created the impression that uniting Italy was as much about expelling foreign interlopers after centuries of interference in Italy's affairs as it was about creating internal political cohesion. Finally, the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia had emerged after the Napoleonic Wars as a sufficiently powerful Italian state that it could conceivably act as a unifying force, one which already controlled the island of Sardinia and large parts of north-western Italy.[3]
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The first major step in the Risorgimento was the First War of Italian Independence. This broke out in the spring of 1848 as part of the broader Age of Revolutions occurring across Europe. Initially a number of Italian powers like Sardinia-Piedmont, the Papal State and revolutionary powers in Sicily, Milan and Tuscany united to wage war against Austria in the north. Ultimately this first war was unsuccessful, though it led to the emergence of numerous revolutionary figures like Giuseppe Garibaldi, while also firmly entrenching the idea of unification in the minds of Italians.[4]
A Second War of Italian Independence was commenced in 1859 after Sardinia-Piedmont had acquired a promise of an alliance with Napoleon III of France in return for the subsequent ceding of Nice and other parts of what are now the French Riviera from Sardinia-Piedmont to France. In the war the Italians and French won a resounding victory and Sardinia-Piedmont acquired Milan and other parts of the Plain of Lombardy from Austria. Then, Garibaldi led an independent expedition to Sicily which succeeded against immense odds in conquering the island and southern Italy, including Naples, from the House of Bourbon. Thereafter, Garibaldi met with King Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia-Piedmont and agreed to hand over these lands to him so that a Kingdom of Italy could be proclaimed in March 1861.
A Third War of Italian Unification was subsequently launched in 1866 after Prussia had attacked Austria during the Austro-Prussian War. This allowed the new Italian state to acquire the remaining Austrian territory in the north-east including Venice and Mantua. Finally, the advent of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 allowed the Italians to enter Rome, where the Papacy had refused to join the new Italian state, as French troops had been guarding the Italian capital and were recalled to France during the emergency. With this Italian unity was completed.[5]
Extent of migration associated with the Risorgimento
Italian unification set off a massive wave of migration which continued for sixty years and eventually resulted in upwards of sixteen million people leaving the peninsula and island between the late 1850s and the start of the 1920s. The precise figure is not known as records of emigrants were not kept until 1874. Regardless, historians and demographers are confident the figure was a minimum of twelve million and almost certainly more. Much of this was caused by the fact that Italy was already one of the most densely populated parts of Europe in early modern times and the increases in population achieved by vaccines, better food supplies and rapidly declining infant mortality rates simply made further population growth unsustainable. At the same time, some of the migration was driven by the economic and agrarian policies which the new Kingdom of Italy that had emerged from unification pursued. These tended to favor the north of Italy and the traditional heartland of the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont at the expense of the poorer regions in the south. By the 1890s and 1900s this was felt in so far as the main center of emigration from Italy was from regions like Naples, Apulia, Calabria and Sicily, where in the 1860s, 1870s and 1880s the north had been the epicenter of Italian outward migration.[6]
Demographic impact of the Risorgimento
The demographic impact of this mass-migration was felt most keenly in the Americas and in particular in the United States and Argentina. More Argentinians today have Italian than Spanish ancestry and many people in that country can trace their family history back to the decades following the Risorgimento. Other countries like Brazil, Paraguay and Canada were also impacted, though not to the same extent. Today approximately 25 out of Argentina’s 45 million people, over 60% of the population, are of Italian descent, making the Italian migration here between 1860 and 1920 one of the world’s most extensive overseas migrations in human history.[7] A similar pattern occurred in the US. For instance, some two million Italians arrived to the country alone in the 1900s. Today approximately 18 million Americans are believed to be of significant Italian ancestry, with millions more having some partial Italian heritage.[8]
Explore more about the Risorgimento
- Italians Immigrating to the United States record collection on MyHeritage
- New York Castle Garden Immigrants record collection on MyHeritage
- Ellis Island and Other New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1957 record collection on MyHeritage
- Italian Surnames: Uncovering the Rich Heritage of the Zeppetelli Family on the MyHeritage Blog
- Long Distance Italian Genealogy Research on Legacy Family Tree Webinars
- Researching Your Italian Ancestors on Legacy Family Tree Webinars
References
- ↑ https://www.thecollector.com/risorgimento-unification-italy/
- ↑ John A. Marino, Early Modern Italy, 1550–1796 (Oxford, 2005).
- ↑ http://assets.cambridge.org/97811076/08849/excerpt/9781107608849_excerpt.pdf
- ↑ Priscilla Robertson, Revolutions of 1848: A Social History (Princeton, 1952), pp. 309–401.
- ↑ https://www.theflorentine.net/2011/03/10/the-italian-risorgimento-a-timeline/
- ↑ Salvatore di Maria, 'Mass Emigration and the 1860 Unification of Italy’, in Italian Canadiana, Vol. 31, Special Issue: Documenting the Italian Diaspora (2017), pp. 9–36.
- ↑ Samuel L. Bailly, Immigrants in the Land of Promise: Italians in Buenos Aires and New York City, 1870 to 1914 (New York, 1999), p. 54.
- ↑ Frank J. Cavaioli, ‘Patterns of Italian Immigration to the United States’, in The Catholic Social Science Review, Vol. 13 (2008), pp. 213–229, at p. 220.