ABSTRACT
On the face of it, the unification of Italy happened very quickly, owed much to good fortune, and was largely an affair of war and diplomacy. At the beginning of the year 1859 Italy was divided politically into seven main parts (see Map 5). Six of these were sovereign states in themselves; the seventh, consisting of Lombardy and Venetia, was included within the Austrian Empire. In the previous three centuries, dynasties had been shuffled and boundaries adjusted, but the map of the peninsula had not altered fundamentally — except briefly during two periods of French domination between 1796 and 1815 (Maps 2 and 3). The country had never been united politically since the sixth century. Yet in less than two years, between April 1859 and November 1860, almost the whole of Italy was brought under one ruler, King Victor Emanuel II of Sardinia.
