Basically on the box. What is the earliest date that a unified state known as "Italy" encompassing the peninsula, Sardinia, Sicily, and at least a good chunk of the North, can rise?
Earliest Italian unification?
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That depends Italy as we know it is a rather recent concept. The earliest "Italy" we could is an independent Kingdom that could break off a weakened HRE. Gian Galezzo of Milan was close to controlling most of what was then the Kingdom of Italy before his untimely death by plague.
An "Italy with modern day lands would have to deal with Naples, Aragon or later on Spain, the Pope and various states.
An "Italy with modern day lands would have to deal with Naples, Aragon or later on Spain, the Pope and various states.
I'd say in the late V century. Wasn't there a Germanic king who ruled over sll of Italy before the Bizantiums send the Lombards against him and then invaded from the South?
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Yes, Odoacer, king of the Goths who ruled Italy and Dalmatia
Odoacer was an Erul, and Magister Militum.
You're thinking of Theoderic, king of the Goths and Italians.Then there were a number of Langobard "kings of Lombardy", complete with an iron crown still existing. They never controlled the extreme south, though, much less Sicily and Sardinia. Rome was also mostly out of their control, and when they finally decided to take it the pope called upon the Franks for help.
Finally in the break up of the carolingian heredity there was a kingdom of Italy, which was later subsumed into the HRE.
An united Italy in 1830/31 is ASB because, while there were revolutionary movements that attempted to overthrow foreign/monarchical rule (mainly the Carboneria), said movements were elitary, relatively small and secretive; they were masonic-ish secret societies with almost no external support. Even though they had good intentions, and some of them were almost socialist, if not even communist, in their ideals, they were doomed to fail. They almost succeeded, once - Romagna seceded and proclaimed itself the "Italian United Provinces" (for real
), but then the rebels' ally, the Duke of Modena Francesco IV (no bullshit ), backstabbed them.The rebels of 1848 were more numerous, they had some popular support (where "popular" means "the middle classes"), and the idea of an united Italy was starting to appeal to more people, including some rulers (mainly the House of Savoy). Actually, if the Papal States and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies didn't withdraw from the war against Austria, the First War of Independence could have been won, or at least it could have been slightly better: All the Italian states were allied to Sardinia-Piedmont in that war, before the Pope withdrew. The birth of a confederation isn't that implausible. It would have been an actual Italian state, too, and not a Sardinia-Piedmont wank. Most of the House of Savoy's policies towards any region that wasn't the North have only done more harm than good.
Before Napoleon, it's a no-no. Only literate people wrote in Italian (ehm, Tuscan), and only the most enlightened among them supported the notion of an Italian state. Italy wasn't... all of Italy, too. According to Dante, Italy only included Tuscany, Lombardy and Emilia: those regions where, perhaps not so coincidentally, the Comuni were strongest (well, only in a "these are the regions that would make an Italian state" sense)*. The rest of the population was either proudly loyal to the city-state they were citizens of, or completely apathetic.
* According to my high school Italian Literature teacher. He held some... unorthodox opinions about everything, so... take this with a grain of salt.
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That doesn't prevent the area being united by the usual tools used to make petty states into greater states - see England for an example of that process.
And calling it Italy after the old name of the peninsula under the Romans isn't inconceivable for someone who manages that.
But that would be much more like a united Iberian peninsula in the sense of uniting multiple separate polities rather than one nation, one people.
Not sure if that's a problem or not - and of course no one OTL was in a position to do it after Henry VI (the Holy Roman Emperor)'s position on the peninsula.
But it seems like it would technically meet the criteria, if not without a lot of hassle.
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did you create him or are you thinking of one of the two Berengar (Berengarius) who held the crown of Italy (as well that of HRE) between the end of the 9th century and the beginning of the 10th? Berengarius I was also Margrave of Friuli, while his grandson Berengarius II was Margrave of Ivrea
Artaxerxes
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From about 1300 or so how do you improve the prospects for Italian unity? Even today the North and South hate each other a lot.
I think on some levels improving the economics of the South would help a lot as well, cut down on corruption and feudalism a little more and encourage literacy and less dependence on family units instead of the state.
I think on some levels improving the economics of the South would help a lot as well, cut down on corruption and feudalism a little more and encourage literacy and less dependence on family units instead of the state.