
The unification of Italy or the Risorgimento (‘Resurgence’), as it is known in Italy, was a process which occurred across the Italian peninsula and the Plain of Lombardy in the middle of the nineteenth century and resulted in the emergence of a unified Italian state in 1861. The Risorgimento saw Italy formed into a unified state after being divided into over a dozen or at times dozens of small states since the High Middle Ages. Unification came about owing to the romantic nationalist sentiment that swept across Europe in the middle of the nineteenth century particularly during the revolutions of 1848. However, it brought great social problems to Italy as new landholding and economic reforms were introduced. These led to grinding poverty across what was already one of the most over-populated regions of Europe at the time. As a result, a mass exodus of people from Italy began. Between unification in 1861 and 1920, it is estimated that fifteen million people left Italy, creating the vast Italian diaspora in countries like the United States and Argentina in the process.[1]
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Unification of Italy chronology of events
Italy had been united under a single power during late antiquity in the shape of the Romans and even after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire large parts of the peninsula and the northern stretches of the country in the Plain of Lombardy had been relatively united under powers like the Ostrogoths in the fifth and sixth centuries, the Lombards in the seventh and eighth and then the Holy Roman Empire from the early ninth century onwards. The shift came in the eleventh and twelfth centuries when the control of the German-based Holy Roman Emperors over Italy began to collapse and the peninsula fragmented into dozens of smaller states, with mercantile powers like Florence, Milan, Genoa, Pisa, Urbino and Bologna in the north and central parts of the country joining other independent states like the Republic of Venice.[2]

Culturally these city states were vibrant and the Renaissance emerged out of them from the fourteenth century onwards, but this political fragmentation rendered Italy a politically unstable place for centuries, as well as a region which had fallen prey to foreign interference. The Spanish and French had vied for control of large parts of the peninsula from the late medieval period onwards and in the eighteenth century they had been replaced by Austria which came to control large parts of the north and south of the peninsula. With the rise of the romantic nationalist movement in the first half of the nineteenth century and inspired by the legacy of the Napoleonic Wars when large parts of the peninsula and Plain of Lombardy had been united into the Kingdom of Italy, calls for Italian unity and the expulsion of the Austrians grew.[3]
Unification, when it came about, was driven by the Kingdom of Sardinia. This had evolved out of the patrimony of the Dukes of Savoy that originally held lands in the Piedmont region straddling the modern-day border between France and Italy. By the 1840s the Kingdom of Sardinia covered the island of Sardinia, as well as much of the western portions of the Plain of Lombardy, its capital being in Turin or Torino. Fueled by the writings of Giuseppe Mazzini, and led by Giuseppe Garibaldi, who ironically was born in Nice in France, a portion of the Savoyard inheritance, wars of unification were launched in 1848, often targeting Austria and its territories in Italy around Venice and the central regions of the Plain of Lombardy.[4]

Two major wars were fought to bring about Italian unification, the first between March 1848 and August 1849, and the second in 1859. The second was particularly significant as the French allied with Sardinia, allowing for the conquest of much of Austria’s territory in northern Italy. This was then handed over by the French to Sardinia in return for the ceding of Savoy and Nice in what is now south-eastern France to the French. Following this, Sardinia was in a position to unite some of the other larger Italian states such as the Duchies of Parma and Modena and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany under its rule. In 1861 King Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia was then declared the first ruler of a united Kingdom of Italy. Rome remained under the direct jurisdiction of the Papacy, but with the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 and the removal of French troops from the city, it was occupied by the Italians, thus completing the Risorgimento.[5]
Extent of migration following Italian unification
Although detailed records are not available for the period prior to 1876, it is generally accepted that the period between 1861 and 1920 saw approximately fifteen million people leave Italy and move abroad, and certainly between twelve and sixteen million. This was most intense between the mid-1870s and the early 1910s, after which the outbreak of war in Europe saw a drastic decline in migration. The migration was driven by a wide range of factors, notably the fact that as one of the most urbanized parts of Europe for centuries it was also relatively over-populated. Consequently, when vaccines and other innovations in healthcare saw a steep decline in infant mortality and rising life expectancies across Europe in the nineteenth century, the population ballooned and placed enormous pressure on the new country’s ability to support so many people. In tandem, the introduction of new economic policies which were skewed in favor of northern Italy by the House of Savoy fueled migration.[6]
The result was one of the largest waves of emigration out of any country in human history. The migrants left from all parts of Italy, not just the poorer regions in the south which are stereotypically viewed as the main origin points of Italian migrants. 1.7 million people, for instance, left the Venice and wider Veneto hinterland in the north-east between 1876 and 1900, though the source of migration shifted southwards from the 1890s onwards, with over two and half million people leaving southern Italy and the island of Sicily between 1900 and 1914.[7]
Demographic impact of Italian unification
These fifteen million or so Italian migrants primarily headed across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas, with the United States and Argentina being the main destinations. There New York City and Buenos Aires became the heartlands of the Italian diaspora in the decades following the Risorgimento, though other American cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and Pittsburgh also developed large Italian communities. In the region of five million Italians or more made America their home.[8] Half a million Italians arrived to Argentina alone in the 1880s, with well over two million Italians living there by 1920s, comprising a quarter of the population. The demographic impact of this is hard to underestimate. There are more people of Italian descent in Argentina today than of Spanish, an anomaly amongst South American countries where the colonial powers for three centuries were Spain and Portugal.[9]
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See also
Explore more about the Unification of Italy
- Italy, Births and Baptisms, 1806-1900 record collection on MyHeritage
- Italians Immigrating to the United States record collection on MyHeritage
- Ellis Island and Other New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1957 record collection on MyHeritage
- 1895 Argentina National Census record collection on MyHeritage
- Tracing Immigrant Ancestors in New York Passenger Lists at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
- La Madre Chiesa – Italian Catholic Parish Records at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
- Coming to America: The Legacy of Castle Garden and Ellis Island at the MyHeritage blog
References
- ↑ https://www.theflorentine.net/2011/03/10/the-italian-risorgimento-a-timeline/
- ↑ https://www.faculty.umb.edu/gary_zabel/Courses/Phil%20281b/Philosophy%20of%20Magic/Dante.%20etc/Philosophers/End/FRAMES/cityframe.html
- ↑ https://www.britannica.com/place/Italy/Early-modern-Italy-16th-to-18th-century
- ↑ https://www.ohio.edu/chastain/rz/sard.htm
- ↑ https://www.theflorentine.net/2011/03/10/the-italian-risorgimento-a-timeline/
- ↑ Grazia Dore, ‘Some Social and Historical Aspects of Italian Emigration to America’, in Journal of Social History, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Winter, 1968), pp. 95–122.
- ↑ Giuseppe Piccoli, ‘Italian Immigration in the United States’ (MA, Duquesne University, 2014), pp. 8–15.
- ↑ https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/immigration/italian/the-great-arrival/
- ↑ 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.