Unification of Italy

• For many centuries, the Italian peninsula was a politically fragmented conglomeration of states. For instance, In 1792, when a conflict erupted between Austria and the Revolutionary French Government, the French invaded the Italian peninsula, unified many of the Italian states, and turned them into republics.
• After Napoleon’s rise to power, the Italian peninsula was once again conquered by the French.
• The period of French invasion and occupation was important in many ways such as revolutionary ideas about government and society, the ideals of freedom and equality, etc.
• With the downfall of Napoleon in 1814 and the redistribution of territory by the Congress of Vienna (1814-15), most of the Italian states were reconstituted.
• However, the Italian peninsula remained fragmented through the mid-1800s, and the concept of a united Italy began to take root. Secret societies were formed to oppose the conservative regimes in Italian states.
• One such society(Carbonaris) was the group Young Italy, founded in 1831 by Guiseppe Mazzini.
• He was a fervent supporter of the idea that Italy must be united through the desires and deeds of its people. Thus, by the middle of the twentieth century, the campaign for Italian unity, also known as the Risorgimento (resurgence), had become popular.
• His plan for creating a free, independent, republican and united country with Rome as its capital was developed while he was imprisoned.
• Mazzini used secret propaganda to awaken the people from their lethargy and motivate them to engage in a war for independence and unity. That is why he is referred to as the “Heart” of unification.
• The revolutions of 1848 ignited nationalist sentiment throughout the Italian peninsula mostly by the professional classes (such as doctors, lawyers, and shopkeepers) as well as students.
• Although these Italian uprisings were unsuccessful, the idea of the Risorgimento continued to gain adherents after 1848.
• The final push for Italian unification came in 1859, led by the Kingdom of Piedmont (especially by Piedmont’s Prime Minister, Count Camillo di Cavour).
• For unification, he tried with the help of military, diplomacy, and international cooperation.
• He is known as the ‘Brain’ and ‘Hand’ of unification.
• The northern Italian states held elections in 1859 and 1860 and voted to join the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, a major step towards unification.
• Giuseppe Garibaldi, a native of Piedmont-Sardinia, was instrumental in bringing the southern Italian states into the unification process.
• He was a nationalist and a republican.
• He committed himself after hearing praise from his people that he would free and unite Italy before he passed away.
• He served as Italy’s “Sword” in the process of unification.
• In 1866, Italy joined Prussia in a campaign against Austria (the 1866 Austro-Prussian War) and thus won Venetia.
• The Italian army reached Rome during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871). Rome and the Papal States were united with Italy that year, and the Risorgimento was finished. The Italian capital shifted from Florence to Rome in the summer of 1871.

Unification of Germany

• Before the German unification of 1871, the German states existed as a loose confederation that had limited economic and political cooperation. Germany was split into 39 tiny states by the Vienna Congress.
• Otto von Bismarck, Prussia’s prime minister, played a clever game of combining diplomacy and war to bring the German states together under its rule by the middle of the 1800s when Prussia had grown to be the more powerful of the two.
• The 1860s saw a string of wars that culminated in the Prussian defeat of France in 1871, leading to the unification of Germany in 1871 under Prussian rule.
• Bismarck’s Iron and Blood policy’s objective was to bring down the German Confederation to unite Germany under the Prussian Monarchy.
• Bismarck’s Prussia first fought a war in 1864 in alliance with Austria against Denmark, annexing most of the territory of the German Confederation.
• Prussia gave Austria a humiliating loss at the Battle of Sadowa (1886), also referred to as the “Battle of Six Weeks.”
• Bismarck established the North German Confederation in 1867. It brought together 22 German states but left aside independent Southern German states like Bavaria.
• Although the Southern states had a pro-Austrian stance, they were compelled to come together after Germany’s victory in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870(Prussia defeated France in the Battle of Sedan in 1870).
• The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 was the catalyst for Germany’s complete unification.

Ist Balkan War (1912)

• In the First Balkan War (1912), the Balkan League (Montenegro, Serbia, Greece, and Bulgaria) attacked Turkey and seized the majority of the European possessions of the Ottoman Empire.
• The land of the Ottoman Empire in Europe was split among the Balkan States as part of the peace agreement.

IInd Balkan War(1913)

• Greece, Romania, Turkey, and Serbia engaged in this conflict with Bulgaria. All the territory Bulgaria had captured during the First Balkan War was lost to it after the war.
• Hence, Germany and Italy’s birth changed the political landscape of Europe and eventually sparked the most significant global catastrophe in human history, World War I.

World War I and National Boundaries

• The Treaty of Frankfurt (1871) caused France and Germany to be in hostilities constantly. Therefore, German Chancellor Bismarck made an effort to exclude France from European politics as a preventative step.
• This resulted in the establishment of both allies and adversaries. Consequently, up until the early 20th century a diplomatic revolution already took place in Europe.