ABSTRACT
In the late 1820s, tensions in Italy increased; in 1830—1831, a wave of revolutions struck central Italy. In 1832, Giuditta Sidoli settled in the French city of Marseilles; there, her apartment served as a meeting place for Italian exiles dreaming of Italian liberation after having been banished from their homes and chased by the police of Europe. In 1833, she left for Italy under an assumed name, hoping that the police would allow her to enter the country. The patriots attributed the lag to the political order and the territorial divisions that Austria had imposed on the peninsula. Economic progress in Piedmont stemmed from administrative and legislative reforms, the encouragement of free trade, and other economic reforms advocated by patriots and European economists. As in the rest of Europe, numerous rumblings preceded the "year of revolutions" on the peninsula. The events of early 1848 resulted in constitutions for all the major Italian states except Lombardy-Venetia.
