Weakness of Italy

What about an Italy that unifies without Two Sicilies? (say Garibaldi is defeated). Would the north have been better off without the south dragging it down?
 

Valdemar II

Banned
What about an Italy that unifies without Two Sicilies? (say Garibaldi is defeated). Would the north have been better off without the south dragging it down?

Yes and no, the south did give Italy a bigger market, a bigger army, greater tax income and workers to the norths industry.

But on the other hand lacking the south would have several benefits, the weakness of Italy would be obvious, also to themself, they wouldn't have to invest in (bribe) the south. Italy would be less likely to attempt colonial adventures (with their colonial empire that's a good thing).

In the end Italy without the south would be a smaller country, but it would also be richer and more Central than South European, and it would likely better understand it own limits.
 
Italy's fundamental problem is economical

In 1913, IIRC the Italian national income per Capita was that of Britains in -1820s-

Italy was simply bluffing when it comes to great power status

No real facts to relate, just an opinion about why this might have been.

Before WWI, Italy would be able to project more political influence than their economic and military power alone would have warranted by taking careful advantage of the balance between roughly-equal existing blocs of other countries. Traditionally England had actively cultivated a "balance of power" on the continent to prevent any bloc from becoming too strong. Italy's best success came in carefully managing its position between existing blocs, leveraging its ability to tip the "balance" one way or the other, a policy completely dependent on Britain's ability to maintain Europe's overall status quo -- but I'm not sure all the movers and shakers in Italy were aware or accepting of this. Certainly the irredentist literature of the time was diametrically opposed to the sense of maintaining and in a way parasitizing the status quo.

Sending troops to Crimea in 1855, and then siding with France (1860), then Germany (1866 and 1870), the only things they absolutely should have avoided were permanently joining one or the other of the continental blocs, antagonizing Britain, or irrevocably tipping the status quo out of balance. I believe they actually had an important hand in the latter with their successful war with Turkey in 1911 which got them Libya and the Dodecanese Aegean islands but which was a blow to Ottoman Empire that resounded in the Balcans to Europe's and certainly Italy's eventual doom.

Once Italy chose sides in WWI, the balance and Britain's ability to control it was broken for good and Italy was no longer able to play the "small independent party in the middle" game -- tho they still felt entitled to the importance that came with it for at least another 20 years...
 
Yes and no, the south did give Italy a bigger market, a bigger army, greater tax income and workers to the norths industry.

But on the other hand lacking the south would have several benefits, the weakness of Italy would be obvious, also to themself, they wouldn't have to invest in (bribe) the south. Italy would be less likely to attempt colonial adventures (with their colonial empire that's a good thing).

In the end Italy without the south would be a smaller country, but it would also be richer and more Central than South European, and it would likely better understand it own limits.

Also an only-Northern Italy could still export to a seperate Southern Italy, keeping it a dependent client state without having to pay for it. One may also get some immigration north which would offer a supply of cheap labor, which is often an oft forgotten crucial element of industrial development.
 
What if
Instead of taking the Italian Crown in 1804, Napoleon had given it to Joseph [or Louis, or... .] along with the Naples Crown. Thereby unifying Italy. [?except Papal states]
Italy receives Dalmatia in 1808.
After France's defeat in 181?, Italy remains united under ???? [ French? Austrian? ???]
The Departments remain along with all the other revolutionary reforms.
mid 1800's Italy takes Papal States. moves stronger into Tunisia.
Different Conference Berlin. Italy keeps Tunisia.

1900's sees a Italy that is truly capable of playing with the Great Powers.
 

Rush Tarquin

Gone Fishin'
Germany didn't really have land reforms, the primary reason for Germanys succes, beside their coal and iron, was because in Germany being a public servant or learned man was more prestigeous than being rich. Nobles treated proffesors as equals even if they was commoneers, and the nobles sought service in the state rather than owning private businesses. Of course some of it was result of making virtue out of necessarity. But in the long term the result was a society where a honest bureaucrat was a deeply respected, while corrupt bureaucrat was despised scum and where even the lowest born could work himself up through society by gaining a education, rather than having a patron. But these elements of German culture goes back to three things one the Jesuit schools among the Catholics and two the Pietistic among the Protestants, and three the focus of the princely states to build strong unitarian states.

Contrary to popular opinion, agriculture is very important to a newly industrialising economy. Cheap food and lots of it is needed to feed the newly urbanising and rapidly growing population. This is rarely in the interests of the latifundia and it's difficult to put the squeeze on them. But if you can divide and redistribute their land to many commoner farmers, you can squeeze them for all they're worth since they don't have the political or economic clout. The classic example of this would be Korea.

In Germany's case, at least with the Junkers, land reform wasn't really necessary because it wasn't a zero sum game between the the agricultural and manufacturing sectors and the northeast wasn't the drain on the German economy that the south was to Italy. Cooperation between the elites of the different sectors was fuelling enormous German economic growth. Outside of the northeast, the small sizes of the German states had kept farms small or mixed and the drive for self-sufficiency of each of the small states meant the owners of large estates cooperated with government to become the new industrial capitalists. Such was the same in Japan to an extent, but there were still recalcitrant land owners who required a more coercive approach.

I am oversimplifying, since of course if the landowners are willing to go along with industrialisation voluntarily, land reform isn't really necessary (though I would point out that it did eventually happen in the Junkers' case in the GDR and the FDR upheld those land reforms). Unlike German landed aristocracy, the Italian landed aristocracy didn't push for an industrial economy (Bismarck of the Second Industrial Revolution was a Junker after all) and sure didn't cooperate with the government to create one. I think the Italian latifundia were just too reliant on legacy methods and 'getting by' to envisage a transformation into an industrial economy as German elites did.
 
Actually the situation is a bit more complex than that.
Economically speaking that was so, but from a political point of view it is quite the opposite.
From 1900 on , virtually all the prime ministers, and a good share of upper bureaucracy came from the southern upper class. The probem is that the southern upper class had basically a latifondist mentality, and its coming to power did not mean an improving of conditions in southern society, nor an impulse toward industrialization in these regions.
The problem is still felt today.

I meant economically - and what you said above is not so much the case in the 1860s & 70s, when most of the ruling class was Northern.
 
There wasn't even a standard language - a lot of the dialects were not easily mutually comprehensible.

That point cannot be stressed enough. In Nations and Nationalism Hobsbawm writes about how, soon after unification when school teachers were dispatched to southern Italy from the north, the differences in dialects were so pronounced that the locals thought the new teachers were Englishmen.

With regards to the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, after unification Northern Italy found itself attached to a region whose level of political, social, and economic development would have in the 20th Century led it to be called part of the Third World.

Relatively small, lacking in natural resources, saddled with a huge backwards region, and not fortunate to have an "Italian Unity" consciousness as widespread, persuasive, and entrenched as the "German Unity" consciousness was, it's more of a question of how the newly unified Italy did as well as it did rather than a questions of how it could have done better.
 
@EdT: The Italy wank TL I mentioned had the hewing closely to Germany. Any thoughts on that?

I haven't read the TL so it's difficult for me to comment on it specifically, but I suspect a stronger Italy would be a little more leery of the *Triple Alliance compared with OTL for a number of reasons. Relations with France will be closer and more important, for one; also, a more self-confident Rome will be more inclined to butt heads with the Austrians over the Trient and perhaps in the Balkans more generally.

None of this precludes being friendly with Germany, but it does mean that there are complicating factors. I certainly feel that, especially if Italy has a larger colonial Empire than OTL, the need for good relations with Britain will trump those with Berlin, so a Germanophilic policy will only last so long as Anglo-German relations are cordial.
 
When joining Triplice Alliance OTL, the Italian delegate imposed the clause to be added:
"the provisions of the treaty cannot in any case be regarded as being directed against England"
 
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