The Likeliness of Italian Unification Before 1848

The Likeliness of Italian Unification Before 1848

The areas that encompass modern day Italy after 1815 and the treaty of

Vienna were a series of states mostly, either directly or indirectly,

under the control of Austria and the fearsome Austrian chancellor

Metternich. Unification of the States in any form before 1848 was seen

by many as a distant dream and by many more as an undesirable change.

Austrian influence within Italy was huge; Austrians directly governed

three states and controlled many others.

The Vienna treaty in 1815 had established Austrian control of many of

the states. The drive for restoration of 'legitimate' monarchs started

by the French had resulted in all of the states taking back their

monarchs or their monarch's descendants. Many of these dismissed many

of the economic, judicial and constitutional reforms introduced by the

previous French rulers and imposed extremely strict, absolutist and

reactionary measures. Many of these states literally went back in time

to periods of pre-French rule. This was not fertile ground for

unification as Liberals, Radicals and Nationalists were seen as

enemies of the state both by absolutist monarchs and Metternich who

was determined to keep Italy the way it was.

The early 1820's and the early 1830's had been dominated in the

Italian states by a series of different attempted revolutions. All of

them were failures and most followed a set template. An initial

revolution set up a temporary government resulting in the monarchy

fleeing, only to return at the head of an army that tended to have a

strong Austrian contingent. The revolutions were localised affairs

with absolute...

... middle of paper ...

...the

lack of power and credibility the nationalist movement had before

1848.

It must have seemed very unlikely that the Italian states would become

unified in the period to 1848. Many obstacles faced the Italian

Nationalists and little was going to be done under Metternich's nose.

A mass revolution that encompassed all areas of society seemed a

distant dream and the revolutions that preceded the 1848 date had

highlighted both this and the lack of Italian wide cooperation. There

was a clear lack of leadership whether it be Mazzini or Charles Albert

and conflicting approaches to unification. The only possible leader

was the Pope at the head of a mere federation. Most of all unification

was simply unappealing to the masses of lower class population who

really had few other interests apart from feeding their families.