Development of a nation: unification of Italy, 1848–70 — timeline

Key topic 1 · The 1848 Revolutions in the Italian states

The causes of the 1848 Revolutions in the Italian states

1846

Pius IX is elected and begins limited reforms. Why this date: It creates the expectation of papal leadership of an Italian federation, which is what briefly made the risings look like one movement.

January 1848

Rising in Palermo; a constitution granted in Naples. Why this date: Italy's revolution begins in the south and before Paris, which is worth knowing because most accounts start elsewhere.

March 1848

Charles Albert grants the Statuto; the Five Days of Milan; Venice declares a republic. Why this date: The Statuto is the constitution that survives 1849 in Piedmont alone, and its date is the beginning of Piedmont's claim to lead.

April 1848

Pius IX refuses to make war on Austria. Why this date: It destroys the federal option under papal leadership, leaving no candidate for national leadership except Piedmont.

Mazzini's revolt against the Pope in Rome

November 1848

Rossi is assassinated; Pius IX flees to Gaeta. Why this date: It removes papal government from Rome and makes a republic possible without any fighting.

February 1849

The Roman Republic is proclaimed and the temporal power declared at an end. Why this date: It is the only occasion on which Mazzini's programme was put into practice, which makes it the test of his argument.

April – July 1849

French troops besiege and take Rome; the Pope is restored. Why this date: A republic destroyed a republic to restore a temporal monarch, which ends the expectation that liberal Europe would help Italian democrats.

The legacy of 1848: the Statuto, Austrian dominance and the papacy

March 1849

Piedmont is defeated at Novara; Charles Albert abdicates. Why this date: It ends the attempt to expel Austria by Italian arms alone, which is the lesson Cavour builds his foreign policy on.

1849

Victor Emmanuel II retains the Statuto when every other Italian ruler revokes his constitution. Why this date: It makes Piedmont the only constitutional state in Italy and the destination for exiles from every other one.

1850

Pius IX returns to Rome and reverses his reforms. Why this date: It closes the federal option under papal leadership permanently.

1864

The Syllabus of Errors. Why this date: It states the papacy's opposition to liberalism as doctrine, which makes any reconciliation with a liberal Italian kingdom far harder.

Key topic 2 · Developments in Piedmont, 1849–54

Political developments in Piedmont under Victor Emmanuel II

March 1849

Victor Emmanuel II accedes after the defeat at Novara. Why this date: It begins the reign in which the constitutional decision is taken and the Piedmontese claim is built.

1849–52

D'Azeglio's ministry; Piedmont rebuilds after the indemnity and receives political exiles. Why this date: It is the period in which Turin becomes the centre of Italian political argument, before Cavour arrives.

1850

The Siccardi Laws abolish separate ecclesiastical courts. Why this date: It begins the conflict with the church that defines Piedmontese domestic politics for a decade, and it is the measure that brings Cavour to prominence.

Cavour's appointment and his reforms

1852

Cavour becomes Prime Minister through the connubio. Why this date: It establishes a centrist majority around modernisation and anti-clericalism, excluding both the clerical right and the Mazzinians.

1855

The Rattazzi Law suppresses religious houses. Why this date: It produces the sharpest domestic crisis of Cavour's ministry and marks Piedmont as the anti-clerical state in Italy.

1850s

Railway mileage and public debt both rise several times over. Why this date: A small state borrowing on that scale is preparing for something, which is the evidence for intent that the diplomacy alone does not supply.

Key topic 3 · The defeat of Austria, 1854–59

The significance of the Crimean War

January 1855

Piedmont allies with Britain and France and sends troops to the Crimea. Why this date: It is a decision to spend lives on standing rather than on territory, which is the clearest example of Cavour's method.

August 1855

Piedmontese troops fight at the Chernaya. Why this date: It supplies the creditable record on which the claim to be treated as an ally rests.

1856

The Congress of Paris; Cavour raises the Italian question. Why this date: The Italian question is discussed by the great powers for the first time since 1815, which is the entire return on the intervention.

Orsini, Plombières and the Second War of Independence

January 1858

Orsini's bomb attack on Napoleon III. Why this date: It convinced the Emperor that an unsettled Italy was a danger to him personally, and the publication of Orsini's letter shows how he chose to use it.

July 1858

The secret meeting at Plombières. Why this date: It sets the terms — a four-state federation, Nice and Savoy to France — that are the strongest evidence about Cavour's actual aims.

23 April 1859

Austria issues an ultimatum demanding Piedmontese demobilisation. Why this date: It rescued Cavour at the moment British mediation had almost prevented the war, and it made Austria the aggressor as the Pact required.

Magenta, Solferino, Villafranca and the annexations

June 1859

Magenta and Solferino; about forty thousand casualties in a day at Solferino. Why this date: The cost is a large part of why Napoleon III stopped, so the battles explain the peace as well as the victory.

July 1859

The Treaty of Villafranca; Cavour resigns. Why this date: France makes peace without its ally, keeping Venetia in Austrian hands and ordering the restoration of the central rulers.

March 1860

Plebiscites in the central states; Nice and Savoy ceded to France by the Treaty of Turin. Why this date: Territory is exchanged for territory, which is the strongest single piece of evidence about the nature of Piedmontese policy.

Key topic 4 · Garibaldi and the Papal States

Garibaldi's expedition to Sicily and Naples

April 1860

A rising begins at Palermo against Bourbon rule. Why this date: It supplies the occasion and, in failing, the reason Garibaldi was asked to intervene.

May 1860

The Thousand land at Marsala; Calatafimi is won within a week. Why this date: It is the point at which an expedition nobody in Turin expected to succeed becomes a serious military fact.

August 1860

Bronte: a peasant land seizure is suppressed with executions. Why this date: It shows the limits of the alliance between the national movement and the southern peasantry, and it begins the southern question.

7 September 1860

Garibaldi enters Naples ahead of his own army. Why this date: A kingdom of nine million has changed hands in four months, which is what alarms Turin into acting.

The great powers, Cavour's intervention and the Kingdom of Italy

September 1860

Piedmont invades the Papal States and wins at Castelfidardo. Why this date: It is Cavour's decisive act of the year and its purpose was to reach Garibaldi before he reached Rome.

26 October 1860

Garibaldi meets Victor Emmanuel near Teano and hands over his conquests. Why this date: It settles that the south is annexed rather than federated, and that the volunteers have no place in the new state.

17 March 1861

The Kingdom of Italy is proclaimed. Why this date: It creates a state without Rome or Venetia, which is why the option continues for another nine years.

June 1861

Cavour dies at fifty. Why this date: The kingdom loses its architect within three months of its creation, before any of the settlement's problems had been addressed.

Key topic 5 · Venice and Rome and the extent of unification by 1870

Obstacles to unity after 1861 and 'Piedmontisation'

1861

Piedmontese law, tariffs, currency and conscription are extended to the whole kingdom. Why this date: It converts annexation into administration, and it is the specific mechanism by which unification was experienced in the south.

1861–65

The brigands' war in the southern provinces. Why this date: More troops were deployed against it than in any war of unification, which measures how far the new state was accepted.

1863

The Pica Law provides for military tribunals in the south. Why this date: It is the legal instrument of the repression and shows the state governing part of its own territory under exceptional powers.

Venetia and Rome: acquired through other people's wars

1862

Garibaldi is stopped and wounded by the Italian army at Aspromonte. Why this date: The state shoots the national hero to avoid war with France, which shows exactly where the constraint on Italian policy lay.

1866

Italy is defeated at Custoza and Lissa and receives Venetia after Prussia's victory. Why this date: It is the clearest case of a province acquired by another power's success.

1867

Garibaldi is defeated at Mentana by French and papal troops. Why this date: It demonstrates that Rome could not be taken while the French garrison remained.

September 1870

French troops withdraw for the war with Prussia; Italian forces enter Rome at Porta Pia. Why this date: Unification is completed at the moment a foreign garrison is needed elsewhere.

Unity in 1870: what had and had not been achieved

1871

Rome becomes the capital; Pius IX rejects the Law of Guarantees. Why this date: The territorial settlement is completed and the religious one is refused in the same year, which is the shape of the whole problem.

1871

The franchise stands at about two per cent of the population. Why this date: It measures how far the state that had been unified was in any sense representative of the people unified into it.

1874

The papacy formally instructs Catholics not to vote or stand in Italian elections. Why this date: It converts papal non-recognition into a practical withdrawal of a large part of the population from national politics.