Risorgimento in the context of "Giuseppe Mazzini"

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⭐ Core Definition: Risorgimento

The Unification of Italy (Italian: Unità d'Italia [uniˈta ddiˈtaːlja]), also known as the Risorgimento (Italian: [risordʒiˈmento]; lit.'Resurgence'), was the 19th century political and social movement that in 1861 ended in the annexation of various states of the Italian peninsula and its outlying isles to the Kingdom of Sardinia, resulting in the creation of the Kingdom of Italy. Inspired by the rebellions in the 1820s and 1830s against the outcome of the Congress of Vienna, the unification process was precipitated by the Revolutions of 1848, and reached completion in 1870 after the capture of Rome and its designation as the capital of the Kingdom of Italy.

Individuals who played a major part in the struggle for unification and liberation from foreign domination included King Victor Emmanuel II; politician, economist and statesman Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour; general Giuseppe Garibaldi; and journalist and politician Giuseppe Mazzini. Borrowing from the old Latin title Pater Patriae of the Roman emperors, the Italians gave to King Victor Emmanuel II the epithet of Father of the Fatherland (Italian: Padre della Patria). Even after 1870, many ethnic Italian-speakers (Italians in Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, Savoyard Italians, Corfiot Italians, Niçard Italians, Swiss Italians, Corsican Italians, Maltese Italians, Istrian Italians, and Dalmatian Italians) remained outside the borders of the Kingdom of Italy, planting the seeds of Italian irredentism.

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Risorgimento in the context of Italian diaspora

The Italian diaspora (Italian: emigrazione italiana, pronounced [emiɡratˈtsjoːne itaˈljaːna]) is the large-scale emigration of Italians from Italy.

There were two major Italian diasporas in Italian history. The first diaspora began around 1880, two decades after the Unification of Italy, and ended in the 1920s to the early 1940s with the rise of Fascist Italy. Poverty was the main reason for emigration, specifically the lack of land as mezzadria sharecropping flourished in Italy, especially in the South, and property became subdivided over generations. Especially in Southern Italy, conditions were harsh. From the 1860s to the 1950s, Italy was still a largely rural society with many small towns and cities having almost no modern industry and in which land management practices, especially in the South and the Northeast, did not easily convince farmers to stay on the land and to work the soil. Another factor was related to the overpopulation of Italy as a result of the improvements in socioeconomic conditions after Unification. That created a demographic boom and forced the new generations to emigrate en masse in the late 19th century and the early 20th century, mostly to the Americas. The new migration of capital created millions of unskilled jobs around the world and was responsible for the simultaneous mass migration of Italians searching for "bread and work" (Italian: pane e lavoro, pronounced [ˈpaːne e llaˈvoːro]).

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Risorgimento in the context of Corfiot Italians

Corfiot Italians are a population from the Greek island of Corfu (Kerkyra) with ethnic and linguistic ties to the Republic of Venice. Their name was specifically established by Niccolò Tommaseo during the Italian Risorgimento. During the first half of the 20th century, Mussolini (whose fascist regime promoted the ideals of Italian irredentism) successfully used the Corfiot Italians as a pretext to occupy Corfu twice.

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Risorgimento in the context of Italian irredentism

Italian irredentism (Italian: irredentismo italiano [irredenˈtizmo itaˈljaːno]) was a political movement during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the Kingdom of Italy. It originated to promote the annexation of majority Italian-speaking territories which were still retained by the Austrian Empire after three wars of independence (1848-1849, 1859 and 1866); specifically, Trento and Trieste were designated as the main "irredent lands". Both provinces were ultimately annexed as a result of World War I, considered in Italian discourse to be the "fourth war of independence": the conclusion of the conflict on November 4, 1918, is still commemorated in Italy as National Unity Day. Thereafter, Italian irredentism waned in importance; however, Italian nationalists and fascists would use irredentist arguments to justify the Italianization of other territories Italy annexed in World War I (such as South Tyrol and the Slavic parts of Istria) and claim many other lands beyond Trento and Trieste. Those latter policies and claims have been abandoned by the Italian Republic.

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Risorgimento in the context of Salerno

Salerno (UK: /sæˈlɛərn/, US: /səˈ-, sɑːˈ-, səˈlɜːrn/; Italian: [saˈlɛrno] ; Neapolitan: Salierno [saˈljernə]) is an ancient city and comune (municipality) in Campania, southwestern Italy, and is the capital of the province of the same name. It is the second largest city in the region by number of inhabitants, after Naples. It is located on the Gulf of Salerno on the Tyrrhenian Sea. Some of the Allied landings during Operation Avalanche (the invasion of Italy) occurred near Salerno. For a time the city became home to Victor Emmanuel III, the King of Italy, who moved from Rome in 1943 after Italy negotiated a peace with the Allies in World War II. Salerno thus became the capital of the Kingdom of the South, the seat of the provisional government and Italy's de facto capital for six months. The city has 125,958 inhabitants as of 2025.

Human settlement at Salerno has a rich past dating back to pre-historic times. In the early Middle Ages it was an independent Lombard principality, the Principality of Salerno, which around the 11th century comprised most of Southern Italy. During this time, the Schola Medica Salernitana, the first medical school in the world, was founded. In 1077, the Normans made Salerno the capital of their lands in all of continental southern Italy. In the 16th century, under the Sanseverino family, who were among the most powerful feudal lords in southern Italy, the city became a great centre of learning, culture and the arts, and the family hired several of the greatest intellectuals of the time. Later, in 1694, the city was struck by several catastrophic earthquakes and plagues. During a period of Spanish rule the city suffered a crisis which would last until the 18th century, but under Napoleon Salerno became part of the Parthenopean Republic. In the 19th century Salerno supported ideas of the Risorgimento and welcomed Garibaldi in 1861.

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Risorgimento in the context of Roman question

The Roman question (Italian: Questione romana; Latin: Quaestio Romana) was a dispute regarding the temporal power of the popes as rulers of a civil territory in the context of the Italian Risorgimento. It ended with the Lateran Pacts between King Victor Emmanuel III and Prime Minister Benito Mussolini of Italy and Pope Pius XI of the Holy See in 1929.

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Risorgimento in the context of Giuseppe Verdi

Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (/ˈvɛərdi/ VAIR-dee, Italian: [dʒuˈzɛppe ˈverdi]; 9 or 10 October 1813 – 27 January 1901) was an Italian composer best known for his operas. He was born near Busseto, a small town in the modern province of Parma (at the time a department of the French Empire), to a family of moderate means, receiving a musical education with the help of a local patron, Antonio Barezzi. Verdi came to dominate the Italian opera scene after the era of Gioachino Rossini, Vincenzo Bellini, and Gaetano Donizetti, whose works significantly influenced him.

In his early operas, Verdi demonstrated sympathy with the Risorgimento movement which sought the unification of Italy. He also served briefly as an elected politician. The chorus "Va, pensiero" from his early opera Nabucco (1842), and similar choruses in later operas, were much in the spirit of the unification movement, and the composer himself became esteemed as a representative of these ideals. An intensely private person, Verdi did not seek to ingratiate himself with popular movements. As he became professionally successful, he was able to reduce his operatic workload and sought to establish himself as a landowner in his native region. He found further fame with the three peaks of his 'middle period': Rigoletto (1851), Il trovatore and La traviata (both 1853). He surprised the musical world by returning, after his success with the opera Aida (1871), with three late masterpieces: his Requiem (1874), and the operas Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893).

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Risorgimento in the context of The Kiss (Hayez)

The Kiss (Italian: Il bacio [il ˈbaːtʃo]) is an 1859 painting by the Italian artist Francesco Hayez. Possibly his best-known work, the painting conveys the main features of Italian Romanticism and has come to represent the spirit of the Risorgimento. It was commissioned by Alfonso Maria Visconti di Saliceto, who donated it to the Pinacoteca di Brera after his death.

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Risorgimento in the context of Gherardini family

The Gherardini family of Montagliari (or Florence) was one of the most prominent historical Italian noble families from Tuscany, Italy. Through the Amideis, the family was of Roman descent. Between the 9th and 14th centuries, they played an important role in Tuscany. Its influence was also felt in the Veneto and Emilia regions between the 16th and 18th centuries, and during the Italian Risorgimento as well as in today's Italian politics and economy. The family's restless and fighting nature has aroused the curiosity of many historians of the Middle Ages. Originating from feudal tradition, it was one of the founding families of the Republic of Florence.

The family took part in Florence's political life between 1100 and 1300. In 1300, they were exiled from the city when Florence began its transformation into a Signoria, later ruled by the Medicis. In his Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri, who was exiled with the Gherardinis, placed the family in Paradise's V Sphere. Following its exile from Tuscany, the family joined the Great Council of Venice (Venice's Chamber of Peers), becoming Patricians of that city, and members of the Venetian nobility. Until 1800, they kept some fiefs between Tuscany and Emilia Romagna.

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