Italian unification

Italian unification

Map showing the unification of Italy, 1829–1871
Native name	Unità d'Italia
Date	1815–1871
Location	Italy
Also known as	Risorgimento

Italian unification (Italian: Unità d'Italia), also known as the Risorgimento (meaning "the Resurgence"), refers to the Italian movement that united the Italian states in the 19th century.

Napoléon Bonaparte invaded Italy in 1796 and later controlled it. When he was defeated in 1815, at the Battle of Waterloo, the free states could now join together. The Congress of Vienna (1814–1815) restored the prewar ancien régime. The Austrian Empire, ruled by the Habsburgs, controlled most of Italy.^[1] The movement began in 1815 with the Congress of Vienna.

It ended in 1871, when Rome became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy by the efforts of Count of Cavour, the prime minister of Piedmont, and Giuseppe Garibaldi, an Italian national hero who united southern Italy.^[2][3] That allowed King Victor Emmanuel II to become the first king of Italy.

1. ↑ "How Napoleon became 'King of Italy'". Napoleon.org. 23 October 2012. Retrieved 28 January 2015.
2. ↑ Collier, Martin (2003). Italian unification, 1820–71. Heinemann Advanced History (First ed.). Oxford: Heinemann. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-435-32754-5. The Risorgimento is the name given to the process that ended with the political unification of Italy in 1871
3. ↑ Riall, Lucy (1994). The Italian Risorgimento: state, society, and national unification (First ed.). London: Routledge. p. 1. ISBN 978-0-203-41234-3. The functional importance of the Risorgimento to both Italian politics and Italian historiography has made this short period (1815–60) one of the most contested and controversial in modern Italian history.