Alternate Dual Monarchy

Hey the internets. I'm a long time lurker who recently started trying to come up with some more developed TLs, and so I thought it'd good to just sort of test the water with an idea that's been rattling around in the old noodle.

If Italian nationalism wasn't as strong as it was OTL, could a more cunning Austrian monarch take advantage of that and unify the peninsula under the double eagle during the 1848 revolutions?

My reasoning is this: If Italian nationalism was more of an underground thing, not really taken up by the Piedmontese as a national agenda, could Franz Joseph have harnessed it and form some sort of Austria-Italy, or at least something less silly sounding :p

Hypothetically any Austrian suboordinate Italian kingdom could consist of Lombardy, Venetia right off the bat. Depending on whether or not the Austrians want to use the Italians to keep the Slavs in check, Trieste and Dalmatia could be incorporated, and Trento could possibly be involved to. Depending on how popular this move is, depending on how the Italian Nationalists see this move, a revolt in central Italy could see the territory controlled by the United Provinces of Central Italy joining with it.

Would this new hypothetical Italian state be liberal or more conservative? Could we expect some sort of Italian/Austrian Zollverein to further capitalize on this? Would this shift Austria's attention away from the balkans and strengthen them against Prussia? Or is this all just a trippy Italophile's pipe dream and totally ASB?

Thanks for any input!
 
I think a separate but allied Kingdom of Northern Italy (or some other name) under Franz Josef's brother Maximilian would be another option. Without doubt a dual Austro-German Empire would be interesting.
 
I know right? I've been lurking for like two and a half years now, and I dont think I've ever seen an Italy that was united by Austria like that.
 
This will not work with Franz Joseph as Emperor - to conservative.
With his brother Maximilian in charge I dare say it might.
However if you make Italy a Kingdom within Austria then the Croats, and the Czechs -at least those two - will want the same deal, which will lead to conflict with Hungary and a possible second civil war.
 
Yeah I was worried about that. I read a TL someone posted recently (I wish I remember what it was) where Franz Joseph slipped in the bathroom, hit his head and had a change of personality. I was thinking that that would make a simple fix but I'm curious about Max now.

I'm not sure it'll solve the problems, but there are more Italians who could be won over than Hungarians, and the Italian states had more wealth than the balkan territory the Austrians began to try to focus on. If there was a second war, I could absolutely see such a kingdom break away as an ally or something.
 
I think the main point here is re-directing Napoleon III appetite.
(his hope was originally to make a Pidemont-based "north italian state" as France's client state. Then things escaped his grip).
Without French intervention in the 1859 war (1848 had no serious historical consequences in italy apart from general turmoil), Pidemont has no chances, Lombardo-veneto is already a kingdom subjected to the austrian empire, and most of north italy is in Haspburg hands by means of relatives.

There was no serious irredentist movement in the south, and even in the north it was not so much strong (it was more a thing restricted to a few elites; most of people did not give a damn about it).

It is not impossible to make N3 eyes look otherwhere: he had schemes both for Geneve and for Belgium.
If he was occupied in these maneuvers, most of italy would remain happily under the double-headed eagle
 
I've just finished The Oxford Illustrated History of Italy by George Holmes and he gave me the impression that among the intellectuals and the middle to upper-classes, nationalism was pretty prevalent.

My initial POD thought would be that the victorious powers at the Congress of Vienna just give Murat the boot and don't give him the opportunity to try to ally with Napoleon during the Hundred Days and make a call for Italian Unification and appeal to the national sentiments. If he hadn't done this, and Mezzogiorno is just returned to Ferdinand to reconstitute the Two Sicilies straight off the bat, the his precedent of the national appeal wouldn't bring it to the forfront of Italian politics. Napoleon might want to try to do as he did after the 1848 revolutions, which I believe would finally mobilize the Italian Nationalists, but if Austria was thinking more progressively because of an unfortunate accident in the bathroom, they'd be in a much better position to attract the Italian states into some sort of Austrian dependent customs union that would spark greater industrialization.
 
Top