Kingdom of Italy

History

The Risorgimento and National Unification

Divided for centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire into rival city-states and foreign-ruled territories, the Italian peninsula was unified in the mid-nineteenth century through the movement known as the Risorgimento ('Resurgence'). Spearheaded by Prime Minister Cavour of Piedmont-Sardinia and revolutionary general Giuseppe Garibaldi's 'Redshirts,' the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed in 1861 under King Victor Emmanuel II, establishing its capital in historic Rome in 1870.

The Myth of the New Roman Empire and Rise of Fascism

Despite fighting on the victorious Allied side in World War I, deep economic turmoil and nationalist frustration over limited territorial gains ('mutilated victory') destabilized Italian democracy. In 1922, Benito Mussolini and his National Fascist Party seized power following the 'March on Rome.' Adopting the ancient Roman fasces (a bundle of rods with an axe symbolizing authority), Mussolini invoked the myth of reviving the Roman Empire and turning the Mediterranean into Mare Nostrum ('Our Sea').

The Axis Alliance and End of the Monarchy

After invading Ethiopia in 1935, Italy aligned with Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany - The totalitarian German state ruled by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party from 1933 to 1945, which initiated World War II in Europe. and the Empire of Japan - The historical Japanese nation-state from the 1868 Meiji Restoration until the enactment of the 1947 postwar constitution. to form the Axis Powers, entering World War II in 1940. However, Italy's under-equipped armed forces suffered severe reversals in North Africa, Greece, and the Eastern Front. Following the Allied invasion of Sicily in July 1943, Mussolini was deposed and the kingdom signed an armistice with the Allies. In 1946, a national referendum abolished the monarchy and established the modern Italian Republic.