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Camillo di Cavour and Realpolitik
The movement to unite Italy into one cultural and political entity was known as the Risorgimento (literally, “resurgence”). Giuseppe Mazzini and his leading pupil, Giuseppe Garibaldi, failed in their attempt to create an Italy united by democracy. Garibaldi, supported by his legion of Red Shirts—mostly young Italian democrats who used the 1848 revolutions as an opportunity for democratic uprising—failed in the face of the resurgence of conservative power in Europe. In the end, it was the aristocratic politician Camillo di Cavour who finally, using the tools of realpolitik, united Italy under the crown of Sardinia.
“Realpolitik” is the notion that politics must be conducted with a realistic assessment of power and in pursuit of the self-interest of individual nation-states by any means, which Cavour excelled at. In 1855, as prime minister of Sardinia, Cavour involved the kingdom on the British and French side of the Crimean War, using the peace conference to give international publicity to the cause of Italian unification. In 1858, he formed an alliance with France against Austria, Italy's major obstacle to unification. After a planned provocation of Vienna, Austria declared war against Sardinia in 1859 and was easily defeated by the French army. The peace, signed in November 1959, joined Lombardy, a formerly Austrian province, with Sardinia. In return, France received Savoy and Nice from Italy—a small price to pay for paving the way to unification.
Garibaldi and Cavour
Inspired by Cavour’s success against Austria, revolutionary assemblies in the central Italian provinces of Tuscany, Parma, Modena, and Romagna voted in favor of unification with Sardinia in the summer of 1859. In the spring of 1860, Garibaldi came out of his self-imposed exile to lead a latter-day Red Shirt army, known as the Thousand, in southern Italy. By the end of the year, Garibaldi had liberated Sicily and Naples. Cavour, however, worried that Garibaldi, a democrat, was replacing Sardinia, a constitutional monarchy, as the unifier of Italy. To put an end to Garibaldi's offensive, Cavour ordered Sardinian troops into the Papal States and the Kingdom of Naples. After securing important victories in these regions, Cavour organized plebiscites, or popular votes, to annex Naples to Sardinia. Garibaldi, outmaneuvered by the experienced realist Cavour, yielded his territories to Cavour in the name of Italian unification.
Cavour succeeded over Garibaldi chiefly because, of the two, Cavour alone understood the relationship between national and international events. Garibaldi, a democrat, a warrior, and an anti-Catholic, was without question on the road to conflict with the monarchies of Europe. Cavour, with the added credibility of representing a monarch, blended perfectly with the political situation in Europe at the time. Cavour was also a realist who practiced realistic politics, and thus, was willing use international power to achieve his domestic goals through alliances. Garibaldi, on the other hand, only had his own grassroots strength, empowered by young Italian democrats interested in an idealistic future for their nation.
Results of Italian Unification
In 1861, Italy was declared a united nation-state under the Sardinian King Victor Immanuel II. Realpolitik continued to work for the new Italian nation. When Prussia defeated Austria in a war in 1866, Italy struck a deal with Berlin, forcing Vienna to turn over Venetia. In addition, when France lost a war to Prussia in 1870, Victor Immanuel II took over Rome when French troops left. The entire boot of Italy was finally united under one crown.
However, unification did not necessarily mean peace in Italy. Cavour, despite his leadership in introducing constitutional and liberal reforms in Sardinia, had no patience for regionalism when his goal was Italian unification. He crushed regional and cultural differences with moderately conservative policies on social and political matters. In doing so, he began to alienate southern peasants and nobles, creating a regional gulf that would come back to haunt Italy in future years.
