AHC - Italian not-quite-unification?

I'm wondering, out of my ignorance, if there's any plausible way for Italian unification to end with Naples still an independent kingdom?
 
I'm wondering, out of my ignorance, if there's any plausible way for Italian unification to end with Naples still an independent kingdom?

Depends on what you have in mind - I mean, you could easily have all of Italy except for the Two Sicilies under one rule and the two Sicilies remaining independent.

But probably not by something like OTL's route.
 
Sure, IIRC there were a number of 'Italian' nationalists that didn't really consider the south to be part of Italy proper. Throw in the language and cultural differences plus that until later the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, well the Kingdom of Naples part, was the richest region and it shouldn't be too hard. Off the top of my head the northern end of the peninsula is united under one state but for various reasons they're not able to absorb the Papal States at the time so it acts as a barrier, over time they merge into roughly a single nation and a little while later conditions change and they're able to start nibbling away at the Papal States and take it over, the Two Sicilies however have managed to get their act together to reform and now culturally see themselves as distinct from the north.
 
Some ideas if you want to remove the nationalist sentiment:

1. Keep southern Italy a Greek-speaking majority area from the Norman conquest on.
2. Use the Norman influence; make Southern Italy culturally Normanized.
3. Make Two Sicilies a lot more economically successful; rich nations typically don't want to jeopardize their finances in a unification.
4. OTL, one of the most powerful nationalist groups was based out of Two Sicilies. Try to get rid of this and instead base the majority of nationalist sentiment in the Northern cities, which are somewhat culturally different.
5. The conquest of Naples was far from certain. It can possibly be avoided.
 
Another idea to reduce nationalist sentiment: if I remember correctly, the Southern Italian languages/dialects were fairly different from the Northern ones until standardization occurred with a unified Italy. What if the Two Sicilies remained in personal union with Aragon (I'm thinking no union with Castille), and a language developed that was a hybrid of Southern Italian and Catalan (maybe called "Aragonese") that became the standard Romance language in the Aragonese territories, while a different standard "Northern Italian" became abdopted. I'm thinking an analogue of how English developed as a hybrid of Norman French and Anglo-Saxon, which are certainly more different than Catalan and Southern Italian....
 
If you have HRE Italy unify than they could see the Sicilians as different people, Having a Sicilian Kingdom in the south could help.
 
Another idea to reduce nationalist sentiment: if I remember correctly, the Southern Italian languages/dialects were fairly different from the Northern ones until standardization occurred with a unified Italy. What if the Two Sicilies remained in personal union with Aragon (I'm thinking no union with Castille), and a language developed that was a hybrid of Southern Italian and Catalan (maybe called "Aragonese") that became the standard Romance language in the Aragonese territories, while a different standard "Northern Italian" became abdopted. I'm thinking an analogue of how English developed as a hybrid of Norman French and Anglo-Saxon, which are certainly more different than Catalan and Southern Italian....

I don't think Aragon could assimilate them enough to change their language. A slightly larger Catalan minority in Sardinia at the most.
The Italian dialects were already different enough to split further apart anyway.
 
I like the idea of Neapolitan identity diverging from Italian - was OTL's Italian unification too late for such a thing to take hold? Say that, for whatever reason (military, political, both, something else), the Kingdom of Sardinia isn't able to add Naples to united Italy. How far apart would the two countries drift in linguistic and cultural terms by 2013? Germany vs Austria or Germany vs Netherlands?
 
Another big issue is precisely what comprises "All Italy less Naples." Does this include South Tyrol and Istria (or even Dalmatia)? The first two were practically taken for granted as Italian by most 19th century nationalists, and the third was popularly propounded as well. Without Naples, it will probably get a lot harder to seize any of the other three above (or even Lombardy and Venetia).

This is obviously, with a 19th century POD. If we go back far enough to change the culture of Southern Italy itself, things become a great deal different.
 
with a 19th century POD I believe it would be too late, unless Italy unifies the entire peninsula but decides to screw the south to point of them leaving.
 
I think that messing with the political allegiances of the "Two Italies" could help drive them apart by the time nationalism takes force. This is relatively easy to do based on dynastic control. Have the Hapsburgs generally control northern Italy (they did at several times IOTL) and the Bourbons control Naples and Sicily (also the case IOTL), and create a series of conflict between the two dynasties and their proxies.
 
Aragonese is a language and was one of the three Official Languages (along with Catalan and Latin) of the Crown of Aragon.

I did know that when I was writing my post. I think I'm just bad at coming up with novel names for things.
 
I don't think Aragon could assimilate them enough to change their language. A slightly larger Catalan minority in Sardinia at the most.
The Italian dialects were already different enough to split further apart anyway.

Yeah, I was thinking more the other way around. As far as I remember Naples was richer than Barcelona at the time, so I was thinking Neapolitan merchants could end up forming most of the middle class in Barcelona and we'd get a Neapolitan superstratum with a Catalan subtratum. My main idea was that if Naples and Barcelona come to have more in common than Naples and Rome or Naples and Florence.
 
Sorry I know I keep coming up with earlier PODs than I think were intended. But, from what I can tell the Northern Italian languages have more in common with French than they do with the Southern Italian languages. Standard Italian came into being in the Renaissance, based upon Tuscan (which falls, just barely, into the Southern group). If, instead, maybe the dialect of Milan had become standard, any Italian identity based on language could be very different.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Italy
 
Just need a better run south Italy. There wasn't any great popular enthusiasm for unification in the south - just a distinct lack of fondness for the Bourbons. Given a popular monarchy and a loyal army, some unification-minded grumblers aren't going to manage much, and there will be allies to be found against a full-scale invasion from the north. Of course, this probably again requires a pre-1815 POD.

Bruce
 
Just need a better run south Italy. There wasn't any great popular enthusiasm for unification in the south - just a distinct lack of fondness for the Bourbons. Given a popular monarchy and a loyal army, some unification-minded grumblers aren't going to manage much, and there will be allies to be found against a full-scale invasion from the north. Of course, this probably again requires a pre-1815 POD.

Bruce

It requires a much earlier POD: either Manfred manages to take the crown or somehow the Franco-Aragonese squabble for the crown of Sicily is avoided, and a local noble would get the crown. The former is easier, in a way: Manfred has a kind of righteous claim (not completely, since he was born on the wrong side of the bed), but the papal meddling must be avoided (and the papal meddling btw was a recurring theme in the history of the southern kingdom, always bringing troubles: obviously the popes were not happy at all to have a strong kingdom on the southern and eastern border of the papal dominions). Avoid the absentee landlords, the distance from the royal capital and the almost continuous wars and the southern kingdom might prosper.
 
Why do you all believe that you need an early POD? You can get Naples-less Italy with 1860 POD - just make the Garibaldis' 1000 fail. At that time the Piedmontese weren't interested of anything south of Romania, IIRC. Only after Garibaldi beat Two Sicilies, it was decided to move south.
 
Sure. And you can have a slightly better kingdom of Two Sicilies with a POD around 1830, but it would be still a country crippled by centuries of bad management. Go back a few centuries, and the southern kingdom is a much much better shape. Easier to build on strength than on weakness

As far as the Piedmontese: before Garibaldi's expedition to Sicily, Cavour's problem was to get support from France for the annexation of the Duchies (Parma, Modena and Tuscany) and of the papal legations (Bologna, Ferrara and Romagna). According to a certain view of Italian history, Garibaldi's move gave him the fig leaf of moving south to keep the "revolutionaries" under control. In doing so, the Piedmontese army took the opportunity to liberate also Marche and Umbria. There's another view, and it says that Cavour was very much against the annexation of the southern part of Italy, because it would have increased the difficulties of forging together a unitary state by an order of magnitude (something similar to Bismarck's reluctance in including too many Catholics in the new Germany). In the case of Cavour, Victor Emmanuel and Garibaldi forced his hand.
 
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Sure, IIRC there were a number of 'Italian' nationalists that didn't really consider the south to be part of Italy proper.

Do you have a link for this? Surely Italianess was always connected with the concept of being a peninsular.

I don't think we need to change the South culturally for this. You just need to engineer an Austrian situation, where, despite being the right culture, it just gets left out for political reasons, and then it sticks.
 
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