Mutilated victory in the context of "Victor Emmanuel III of Italy"

The Kingdom of Italy (Italian: Regno d'Italia, pronounced [ˈreɲɲo diˈtaːlja]) was a unitary state that existed from 17 March 1861, when Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia was proclaimed King of Italy, until 10 June 1946, when the monarchy was abolished, following civil discontent that led to an institutional referendum on 2 June 1946. This resulted in a modern Italian Republic. The kingdom was established through the unification of several states over a decades-long process, called the Risorgimento. That process was influenced by the Savoy-led Kingdom of Sardinia, which was one of Italy's legal predecessor states. In 1882 it became a colonial empire, establishing the Italian Empire.

In 1866, Italy declared war on Austria in alliance with Prussia and, upon its victory, received the region of Veneto. Italian troops entered Rome in 1870, ending more than one thousand years of Papal temporal power. In the last two decades of the 19th century, Italy developed into a colonial power, and in 1882 it entered into a Triple Alliance with the German Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, following strong disagreements with France about their respective colonial expansions. Although relations with Berlin became very friendly, the alliance with Vienna remained purely formal, due in part to Italy's desire to acquire Trentino and Trieste from Austria-Hungary. As a result, Italy accepted the British invitation to join the Allied Powers during World War I, as the western powers promised territorial compensation (at the expense of Austria-Hungary) for participation that was more generous than Vienna's offer in exchange for Italian neutrality. Victory in the war gave Italy a permanent seat in the Council of the League of Nations, but it did not receive all the territories it was promised.

The Treaty of Rapallo was an agreement between the Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in the aftermath of the First World War. It was intended to settle the Adriatic question, which referred to Italian claims over territories promised to the country in return for its entry into the war against Austria-Hungary, claims that were made on the basis of the 1915 Treaty of London. The wartime pact promised Italy large areas of the eastern Adriatic. The treaty, signed on 12 November 1920 in Rapallo, Italy, generally redeemed the promises of territorial gains in the former Austrian Littoral by awarding Italy territories generally corresponding to the peninsula of Istria and the former Princely County of Gorizia and Gradisca, with the addition of the Snežnik Plateau, in addition to what was promised by the London treaty. The articles regarding Dalmatia were largely ignored. Instead, in Dalmatia, Italy received the city of Zadar and several islands. Other provisions of the treaty contained safeguards for the rights of Italian nationals remaining in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and provisions for commissions to demarcate the new border, and facilitate economic and educational cooperation. The treaty also established the Free State of Fiume, the city-state consisting of the former Austro-Hungarian Corpus separatum that consisted of Rijeka and a strip of coast giving the new state a land border with Italy at Istria.

The treaty was met with a degree of popular disapproval in both countries. In the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes it was unpopular with Slovenes and Croats, as it represented a loss of national territory where about a half million Slovenes and Croats lived. Zadar lost significance when it became an Italian semi-enclave, which allowed Split to overtake it in significance in Dalmatia. The Port of Rijeka suffered from the loss of trade with the hinterland, causing an economic decline. In Italy, the claim to Dalmatia relinquished in the Treaty of Rapallo contributed to fueling the myth of the mutilated victory. The myth was created during the Paris Peace Conference, where the Italian delegation was unable to enforce the Treaty of London, and perpetuated the view that Italy had won the war but its victory was compromised by an unjust peace.

The Governorate of Dalmatia (Italian: Governatorato di Dalmazia; Croatian: Guvernatorat Dalmacija) was an administrative division of the Kingdom of Italy that existed during two periods, first from 1918 to 1920 and then from 1941 to 1943. The first Governorate of Dalmatia was established following the end of World War I, given the London Pact (1915), and was disastablished following the Treaty of Rapallo. The London Pact also promised Italy part of Dalmatia (for the presence of Dalmatian Italians). However, both the peace settlement negotiations of 1919 to 1920 and the Fourteen Points of Woodrow Wilson, who advocated self-determination, took precedence, with Italy being permitted to annex only Zadar from Dalmatia, with the rest of Dalmatia being part of Yugoslavia. Enraged Italian nationalists considered the decision to be a betrayal of the promises of the London Pact, so this outcome was denounced as a "mutilated victory".

The second Governorate of Dalmatia was established following the military conquest of Yugoslavian Dalmatia by General Vittorio Ambrosio, during World War II. It had the provisional purpose of progressively importing Italian national legislation in Dalmatia in place of the previous one, thus fully integrating it into the Kingdom of Italy. It was a territory divided into three provinces of Italy during the Fascist Italy and Italian Empire epoch. It was created as an entity in April 1941 at the start of World War II in Yugoslavia, by uniting the existing province of Zara with occupied Yugoslav territory annexed by Italy after the invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers and the signing of the Rome Treaties.