Italy on the Eve of the French Revolution

Italy – The Unification of Italy, 1796-1871

In this course, Dr David Laven (University of Nottingham) explores the Unification of Italy between 1789-1871. We begin by thinking about what Italy was like in the late 18th century, emphasising its regional diversity in terms of both politics and society. After that, we think about the changes wrought by Napoleon's invasion of Italy in the 1790s, before turning in the third module to what happened after Napoleon and the French had been driven out of Rome after the Battle of Waterloo. Over the following five modules, we follow the progress of Italian unification from the revolutions of 1820-21 and the early 1830s to the creation of the state of Italy in 1861. In the ninth module, we think about some of the public responses to unification, which weren't quite as jubilant as we might expect, before turning in the tenth and eleventh modules to think about how Venetia and Rome came to be incorporated into the new state of Italy. Finally, in the twelfth module, we think about the longer-term legacy of unification: to what extent was the creation of an Italian state matched by the creation of an Italian national consciousness?

Italy on the Eve of the French Revolution

In this module we think about what Italy was like in the late 18th century, focusing in particular on its division into several constituent states (e.g. Papal States, Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Republic of Venice), the extent to which different sections of society believed in a national Italian identity, the importance of the pope as both a temporal and spiritual leader, and the various political systems – Kingdoms, Republics, Duchies, etc. – found across the country.