History of early modern Italy
[1] By 1814 Italy was an economically backward and depressed area; its industrial structure had almost collapsed, its population was too high for its resources, its economy had become primarily agricultural.
Wars, political fractionalization, limited fiscal capacity and the shift of world trade to north-western Europe and the Americas were key factors.
[4][5] Piedmont returned to the Savoy from France due to the role played by the duke Emmanuel Philibert in the battle of St Quentin during the Italian War of 1551–1559.
When the Seven Years' War broke out, Venice was left out of the concert of great powers: the same, however, was true for the Venetian mediterranean rivals such as the Ottoman Empire (sick man of Europe after centuries of warfare) and the Genoese who had lost its possessions in the Aegean Sea, in Tunisia, and, later, Corsica.
They fought in Germany, in France, in Italy, the Spanish Netherlands, in North Africa, on the fleet—on the Invincible Armada (1588), too—and in Central and South America, with very good results.
He largely succeeded in making peace with Rome, but international strife caused the Austrian emperors to impose more taxes on Naples and neglect all but the city's traditional feudal lords.
Cardinal Michael Friedrich von Althann next became viceroy (1722–1728), but upset the nobility (already reeling from imperial taxes) and the middle class with his pro-clerical stance.
Althann's downfall came by attempting to establish a state bank (the Banco di San Carlo) with the intention of acquiring crown lands for the Austrian emperor.
He infuriated both the nobility and middle class with this ill-conceived campaign, and after his expulsion Naples suffered several tumultuous years of famine and social unrest, with international problems preventing any attempt at administrative reform.
In the spirit of the Enlightenment, Tanucci attempted to establish a benevolent despotism by a series of reforms and weakening the power of traditional Neapolitan institutions.
[18] Ferdinand came of age in 1767, but had little interest in government and was largely dominated by his wife the Archduchess Maria Carolina, who disliked Tanucci's pro-Spanish stance and managed to replace him with Sir John Acton, an English emigre.
After Sicily passed under Austrian rule in 1720, trouble erupted as Vienna stationed permanent garrisons of German-born troops on the island, provoking frequent and violent confrontations with the local populace.
[19] The corruption and backwardness of Sicilian society made it difficult to establish a working government, and much like Naples Sicily was forced to pay massive taxes and tribute to Vienna.
However, Emperor Charles VI attempted to build up Sicily's economy by turning Messina and other locations into important ports so as to attract foreign commerce, as well as shore up the island's failing grain and silk industries.
Charles had a tricky religious situation in Sicily where the king traditionally served as apostolic legate, which he sought to maintain at all costs while also promising to defend the Catholic faith.
His textbook "Diceosina, o Sia della Filosofia del Giusto e dell'Onesto" (1766) was a controversial attempt to mediate between the history of moral philosophy, on the one hand, and the specific problems encountered by 18th-century commercial society, on the other.
[25] At the end of the 18th century, Italy was almost in the same political conditions as in the 16th century; the main differences were that Austria had replaced Spain as the dominant foreign power after the War of Spanish Succession (and that too was not true with regards to Naples and Sicily), and that the dukes of Savoy (a mountainous region between Italy and France) had become kings of Sardinia by increasing their Italian possessions, which now included Sardinia and the north-western region of Piedmont.
The French Revolution had attracted considerable attention in Italy since its beginning, inasmuch as the reform attempts of enlightened despots throughout the 18th century proved largely abortive.
As early as 1792, French armies had penetrated Italian soil, and that same year, the impoverished Piedmontese peasants warned their king that he might too face justice as had happened to Louis XVI in France.
One of these dissenters, Filippo Buonarroti, a member of an ancient Tuscan noble family, returned to Italy along with the French armies and briefly set up a revolutionary government in the Ligurian town of Oneglia.
This treaty gave Austrian recognition to the existence of the Cisalpine Republic (made up of Lombardy, Emilia Romagna and small parts of Tuscany and Veneto), and annexed Piedmont to France.
In addition, even native republicans became disillusioned when they realized that the French expected them to be obedient satellites of Paris, which included frequent interference in local affairs and massive taxes.
After the War of the First Coalition ended, French aggression in Italy continued unabated, and in 1798 they occupied Rome, sent the Pope into exile, and set up a republic there.
But Ferdinand skillfully organized a counterrevolt led by his agent Cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo, who landed in Italy and rallied a peasant mob, which then retook Naples and proceeded to pillage and destroy the manor homes of the hated nobility.
Austria retained only control of Venetia, while France dominated the whole rest of northern Italy, leaving only the weak papal and Neapolitan states in the south.
Ferdinand VI's dominions in southern Italy remained independent for the first few years of the 19th century, but they were too weak to resist a concerted attack, and a French army swiftly occupied Naples in early 1806.
In 1805, after the French victory over the Third Coalition and the Peace of Pressburg, Napoleon recovered Veneto and Dalmatia, annexing them to the Italian Republic and renaming it the Kingdom of Italy.
Piedmont, Genoa and Nice came to be united, as did Sardinia (which went on to create the State of Savoy), while Lombardy, Veneto, Istria and Dalmatia were re-annexed to Austria.
The political and social events in the restoration period of Italy (1815–1835) led to popular uprisings throughout the peninsula and greatly shaped what would become the Italian Wars of Independence.
The Italian tricolour waved for the first time in the history of the Risorgimento on 11 March 1821 in the Cittadella of Alessandria, during the revolutions of 1820s, after the oblivion caused by the restoration of the absolutist monarchical regimes.
