ABSTRACT
In 1815 Italy consisted of eight separate states. Most were under the direct or indirect control of Austria, and those that were not were ruled by conservative, absolutist kings. Forty-five years later PiedmontSardinia, by no stretch of the imagination powerful enough at the outset to dominate the peninsula, provided Italy with her first king and stamped unification on the country. To achieve this foreign domination had to be overcome, local absolute rulers had to be unseated, and the different enthusiasms of patriots had to be united in support of a small, conservative state which occupied only the north-eastern corner of the country and whose upper classes habitually spoke French and not Italian. All this had to be accomplished without stirring the Great Powers, accustomed since the fifteenth century to regarding Italy as their playground, into repressive intervention. In the circumstances it is small wonder that after unification had been achieved Gladstone described it as ‘among the greatest marvels of our time’.
