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italy
Nationalist forces in Italy rebelled against their foreign rulers. This happened in Parma and Modena in 1831 -
italy
Republican forces fomented a revolt against the pope, declaring the Republic of Rome in 1848. -
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In 1852, Count Camillo di Cavour become prime minister of Sardinia, a kingdom that included both the island of Sardinia and the Piedmont region of northern Italy. -
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At Cavour’s urging, Sardinia fought on the side of the British and French in the Crimean War. Having thus formed a friendship with France, Cavour joined Napoleon III in an attack on Austria. As a result, Lombardy and Sardinia were united in 1859. Later that year, most of the rest of northern Italy joined the union of Italian states. -
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The new Italian government was closely based on the Sardinian model. The king of Sardinia became the king of Italy. The new Italian parliament, meeting in 1860, was officially referred to as “the eighth session of the Sardinian Parliament.” The vote was limited to men over the age of twenty-four who were literate and owned property—a total of about 8 percent of all Italian men in that age group. -
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In 1860, the fiery republican Giuseppe Garibaldi led an invasion of his followers, the Red Shirts, into the kingdom of Sicily, ostensibly to join a popular uprising. With covert assistance from Cavour, Garibaldi liberated both Sicily and Naples. Although Cavour was a monarchist and Garibaldi was a republican, they found common ground in their desire to unify their people. -
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1860 unification reduced the Papal States to the city of Rome and the area immediately surrounding it. -
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Garibaldi believed that the natural next step was to march into Rome, but Cavour felt it was better to hold off rather than make an enemy of the pope. Therefore, he sent Sardinian troops to maintain peace in the Papal States. Next, with Garibaldi’s full support, he held an election throughout the states of southern Italy to decide whether the people were ready to join the northern states and Sardinia as a unified nation. The nation was officially united in 1861 -
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in 1861 the king of Sardinia was crowned Victor Emmanuel II of Italy -
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Since France and Austria were united in the desire to maintain a divided and weak Italy, they worked together to put down the rebellions. French troops occupied Rome until 1870. -
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When France declared war on Prussia in 1870, occupying French troops abandoned Rome. This left the pope undefended, and the Italian army immediately marched in to complete the unification process. Rome, once the center and apex of Classical civilization, had enormous symbolic importance to the Italians, and it was immediately named the new Italian capital city. -
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Prime Minister Benito Mussolini signed an agreement naming the Vatican an independent city-state in 1929.
