ABSTRACT
The experiences of Liberal Italy in the ‘post-Risorgimento’ were in fact a disappointment to many. The ‘poetry of the Risorgimento’, in Charles Delzell’s words, ‘gave way to the prose of the post-Risorgimento’.1 The failure immediately to include Venetia and Rome within the unitary state seemed a particularly striking admission of national weakness. Rome was an especially potent symbol of Italian unity and strength, and its absence from Liberal Italy was felt very acutely. Rome only became part of Italy in 1870, when defeat in the Franco-Prussian war forced Napoleon III to withdraw the French garrison from Rome. The price was a lasting breach between Church and state. Pope Pio IX withdrew as a self-proclaimed ‘prisoner’ into the Vatican, and a papal encyclical threatened Catholics with excommunication if they participated in Italian politics. Venetia was won from the Austrians earlier, in 1866, but only after a humiliating defeat by the Austrian navy had served to emphasise Italy’s lack of independence and power. Other Italian regions, most notably the Trentino (or South Tyrol), remained ‘unredeemed’ until after the First World War.
