Delayed Italian unification
- Thread starter walmart
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From a certain point of view it was only completed with WWI. From a certain point of view.
Grey Wolf
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There would be no Triple Alliance, no unsuccessful war on Ethiopia, or unsuccessful attempt to get a Chinese Treaty Port, and probably no Libya war if the new state of Italy is so new by the early 20th century
Easy to say what you don't get, harder to say what you do
Really, it all depends on why Italy does not form during the 1860s. It was, I think, proclaimed in 1861, so you really need to remove the Austro-Italian wars or reverse their outcome
Easy to say what you don't get, harder to say what you do
Really, it all depends on why Italy does not form during the 1860s. It was, I think, proclaimed in 1861, so you really need to remove the Austro-Italian wars or reverse their outcome
Keeping Italy un-unified isn't actually that hard. The hard part is unifying it in the early 1900s.
Napoleon re-drew the map of Northern Italy pretty much on a whim. Butterfly away him (or the French Revolution in general) and you can keep an Italy that has Savoy, Milan, Venice, Tuscany, the Papal States, and the Two Sicilies without much trouble. Have each state be allied to a Great Power to prevent unification.
Napoleon re-drew the map of Northern Italy pretty much on a whim. Butterfly away him (or the French Revolution in general) and you can keep an Italy that has Savoy, Milan, Venice, Tuscany, the Papal States, and the Two Sicilies without much trouble. Have each state be allied to a Great Power to prevent unification.
Grey Wolf
Donor
I would assume we would want to keep the rest of 19th century history at least GENERALLY the same, or this question just becomes part of "what if EVERYTHING was different"
Avoiding the Crimean War would mean Sardinia did not get the kudos and recognition it did for joining in against Russia, even if everyone else paid for them to do.
Or, even if the Crimean War happens, then Sardinia needs to lose against Austria - or never fight them
Once Italy is proclaimed in 1861 the premise of this post fails.
Avoiding the Crimean War would mean Sardinia did not get the kudos and recognition it did for joining in against Russia, even if everyone else paid for them to do.
Or, even if the Crimean War happens, then Sardinia needs to lose against Austria - or never fight them
Once Italy is proclaimed in 1861 the premise of this post fails.
Either the Italian nationalists need to somehow not co-opt the Savoyards (maybe they are too afraid of the republican elements deposing them?), or for France not to support Sardinia.
Is there a way to either (a) convince Louis Napoleon (the future Napoleon III) to not support Sardinia, or for someone else to be in charge of France who isn't in favour of Italian unification, (b) for Sardinia to view the price of aid as being too much, or (c) for the Italian nationalists to be taken over by people who scare the Savoyards off supporting, and instead want to crush as being too subversive?
Is there a way to either (a) convince Louis Napoleon (the future Napoleon III) to not support Sardinia, or for someone else to be in charge of France who isn't in favour of Italian unification, (b) for Sardinia to view the price of aid as being too much, or (c) for the Italian nationalists to be taken over by people who scare the Savoyards off supporting, and instead want to crush as being too subversive?
It's still not finished, Corsica, Ticino, Nizza are still occupied Italian territories, and Istria was sadly depopulated from its Italian population, and that's not even talking about Malta, arguably rightful Catholic Italian territory (just a bit confused about their origins)
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Nice is not an Italian city because it is indeed French-speaking. Trentino is indeed in Italy, even that there is a part which does not speak Italian but German. And what about the Aosta Valley that speaks French?
My bad i wanted to write Ticino,
Nice was Italian speaking before being invaded by French northerner.
I'm not saying that Italy should be restricted to the Italian territories, but it should have included all of them.
If Austria defeats Italy in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, they might have kept the Veneto-Friuli for long, at least until an alt-WWI.
Even worse, if the Italian defeat is blatant enough (maybe an extended war after defeating Prussia?) the Austrians might push for the restoration of the pre-1860 Papal States, separating North and South Italy, maybe even pushing the North to become a Republic.
Even worse, if the Italian defeat is blatant enough (maybe an extended war after defeating Prussia?) the Austrians might push for the restoration of the pre-1860 Papal States, separating North and South Italy, maybe even pushing the North to become a Republic.
I think Ticino and Corsica are the main "Italian" regions that Italy missed on. Nice had historic ties with Italian states but its native language (Nissart) is a form of Occitan. Savoy (the part that France got) was more francophone than italophone.
On the other hand regions like Aosta Valley and South Tyrol were not really Italian in culture before they became part of Italy. Even some other regions like Piedmont or Sicily could, with a different POD, be considered separate nations.
You could have Emperor Francis of Austria have a competent heir and not the mentally handicapped Ferdinand I. The Austrian Government was essentially paralyzed during his regency. Maybe a competent Emperor would be able to fully industrialize the Empire and Crush the Hungarians militarily while redistributing the land of the Hungarian magnates among the peasantry. This combined with making deals to give rights to the Slavs within the Empire would give Austria support of most of its people as most of the Hungarian peasants were pretty indifferent while the driving force of Hungarian nationalism and separatism was the aristocracy. A new national identity might be crafted where the various disparate peoples of the Empire are united in a federal absolute Empire under the Habsburg dynasty. This was becoming a reality for the Austrians prior to WWI, and had they won the war or avoided it entirely, the Empire likely would have reformed into a multi-ethnic state united under loyalty to the Habsburg Kaiser. Such a state like this would easily crush the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont and would rush to defend the Pope. You could also have the Italian nationalist who tried to assassinate Napoleon III succeed this time which would likely turn France against Italy and divert its focus inward as things would be unstable for the child Emperor Napoleon IV as the Second French Empire's foundations would be rattled.
Austria assuming it modernizes and reforms its military would also likely be able to take on Prussia to retake Silesia.
Austria assuming it modernizes and reforms its military would also likely be able to take on Prussia to retake Silesia.
The problem with Istria is that the geographic distribution of Italians did not make logical borders. Fiume, for example, was Italian in the city but the suburbs were Slavic. It would have been impractical to have separated the city and the suburbs with a border
Maybe you can have multiple Italys at the same time, all trying to unite the peninsula untill one of them succeed. A north east Savoyard Italy in Turin, a central Habsburg Italy in Firenze, the Pope in Rome and a Bourbon Italy in Naples. Maybe one of them is a republic, one might be communist. But in the end, after one of the great wars, or even after a cold war, one of them manage to unit Italy at last.
I will add that the County of Nice only became part of the Savoyard State during the conflicts between the two Capetian houses of Anjou. Before that, the County of Nice was a part of the County of Provence.
I will admit that Nice proper was majority Italian at the time of the transfer, unlike Savoy, but that may not have been true for the county at large.
And afterwards... Well, the French were pretty good at assimilating other cultures.
Nice was culturally at the fringe of the Italian sphere insofar it was part of the Savoyard state, which used Italian as the principal official language even if the court language was mainly French. However, the spoken language in Nice used to be a form of Provençal Occitan, not an "Italian" vernacular. That said, Provençal ("French") and Ligurian ("Italian") do form a partial dialect continuum in that general area, with "transitional" varieties spoken around where the international border now is.
It is reasonable to say that Nice and surroundings are "ethnically French" (insofar you can say that Occitan speakers are "French"), even if before the cession the cultured people there would have readily have identified as Italians; if Italy had kept the area, its population would have been considered Italian and likely self-identified as such, not unlike "French-speaking" (actually Arpitan, but the language of culture there is historically French) Aostans tend to do.