THE ITALIAN STATE
By Matthew V. Grieco
On March 17, 2024, Italy celebrated its 163rd anniversary of unification. Actually, the story is not so simple. The Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed in 1861, but the reunification, or Risorgimento, was not yet complete.
To understand the story, we must begin at the beginning, or at least a beginning. Although the Roman Empire “fell” in 476 A.D., the eastern half of the empire, later known as Byzantium, continued. Under the Emperor Justinian, the Byzantines briefly reconquered Italy from the occupying Ostrogoths and Vandals. However, in 568 A.D., the Lombards invaded, and the peninsula remained divided for the next 1300 years. At times the various city-states, principalities, duchies, republics, bishoprics, and dictatorships were too numerous to count.
By 1859, there were six large states, plus an area under the direct occupation of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Kingdom of Sardinia, also known as Piedmont (the capital was located at Turin), became the nucleus around which the new nation was to be formed. Ruled by the Savoyard dynasty, one of the oldest in Europe, Piedmont-Sardinia had steadily grown in size and prestige over the centuries, mainly through astute diplomacy, including propitious royal marriages. The process of reunification would take greater diplomatic skill yet, since most of the “great powers” were unreceptive to another competitor entering the international stage, and even less enamored with the idea of nationalism, which could threaten the integrity of their multi-ethnic empires and even the legitimacy of their thrones, which rested upon a divine right of rulership rather than popular acclaim. Piedmont-Sardinia’s Prime Minister, Camillo di Cavour, was up to the task, aided by the polemical writings of political theorist Giuseppe Mazzini.
With the assistance of French forces, Piedmont-Sardinia fought two large engagements with the Austrians, the Battles of Magenta and Solferino, the latter of which was so bloody that it inspired the creation of the International Red Cross. The Austrians withdrew from the region of Lombardy (remember those Lombards?), and concluded a peace. The price for French aid was the cession of Nice and part of the ancestral Savoy homeland.
Popular uprisings in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the Duchies of Parma and Modena, all Austrian satellite states, drove out their foreign rulers and the populace voted for union with Piedmont-Sardinia. At that point, the European powers were content to see the reunification halted. However, their intentions were foiled by the lightening campaign of Giuseppe Garibaldi, who landed in Sicily with his “Thousand,” or the “Red Shirts,” and soon took the entire Kingdom of Naples, also known as the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, which had been ruled by a branch of the Bourbon family. Garibaldi from the south, and Piedmontese King Victor Emanuel II from the north, overran most of the Papal States, lying across the center of the peninsula. Foreign pressure prevented the entrance into Rome itself until 1870, when the world’s attention was focused on the Franco-Prussian War. Turin served as the first Italian capital, until 1865, when it was transferred to Florence. In 1871, the government finally relocated to Rome; relations with the Vatican would remain strained until an accord of 1929.
The Austrians were not driven out of the Veneto region until 1866, when Italy participated in the Austro-Prussian War. Still, the nation was not yet whole. The Trentino (at the Alps) and Trieste and its surrounding area on the Adriatic, were held by Austria until the 1919 peace treaties following World War I.
Incidentally, while Italy was fighting its wars of reunification in the 1860s, the United States was struggling for reunification in the Civil War. And the last States, Alaska and Hawaii, were not admitted to the union until 1959.
June 2nd marks the Italian national holiday la Festa della Repubblica, the Festival of the Republic, celebrating the abolition of the monarchy and the inauguration of a republican form of government, by popular referendum in 1946.
The Italian Republic is a parliamentary system, with a bicameral legislature, consisting of a 630-member Chamber of Deputies, and a 315-member Senate. The executive branch is split between a President, the head of state, with ceremonial and important appointive powers, and a Prime Minister, who runs the day-to-day affairs. The independent judiciary is composed of trial courts, appellate courts, and a Supreme Court of Cassation, although there is a separate Constitutional Court that determines issues of constitutionality.
Italy is divided into 20 Regions, roughly equivalent to our States: Abruzzo, Apulia (Puglia), Basilicata, Calabria, Campania, Emilia-Romagna, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Latium (Lazio), Liguria, Lombardy (Lombardia), Marche, Molise, Piedmont (Piemonte), Sardinia (Sardegna), Sicily (Sicilia), Trentino-Alto Adige, Tuscany (Toscana), Umbria, Valle d’Aosta, and Veneto. The regions are divided into 110 provinces, and the provinces into 8,100 municipalities.
Within the geographical boundaries of Italy is another republic, the independent nation of San Marino. In fact, the Republic of San Marino is the oldest republic in the world. By tradition, it was founded it 301 A.D. by St. Marinus, a stonecutter who fled the persecution of Christians by the Emperor Diocletian and sought refuge on Mt. Titano, near Rimini. He attracted followers, and on his deathbed told his community: “I leave you free from any other man” (relinquo vos liberos ab utroque homine). Initially governed by the heads of all the families, San Marino instituted a republican form of government in 1243. The executive office consists of two co-equal Captains-Regent, elected every six months.
True to its heritage as a safe haven, San Marino sheltered Garibaldi from Austrian troops in 1849, for which act its freedom was recognized by Italy.
San Marino is 23.6 square miles, roughly one-third the size of the District of Columbia, and has a population of just under 34,000.