Nationalism in Italy during the 1900's.

By 1871, the separate states of Italy had finally become a unified country. Nationalism played a ver large part in this unification process. If it hadn't been for the people of this region having a strong sense of pride for their country, Italy would still be split up into many nations as it was in the early 1800's. There were certain people who helped move this process along tremendously, including Cavour, Mazzini and Garibaldi. All these great men helped form new movements or ideas. Then in the late 1800's, the people of Italy had a growing sense of nationalism, which led to many changes in the future of their states.

Feelings of nationalism arose while Napoleon I was in rule and then later, developed into large movements. Even more importantly, thinkers and writers who tried to create interests in the Italian traditions, ended up bringing up the Risorgimento, which in Italian means - " the resurgence". Risorgimento was a nationalistic movement aimed to liberation and unification. Patriots of the Risorgimento worked together in their aims of liberation and unification, however, they disagreed on what type of government that would come into place after this unification.

Secret societies called Carbonari, which was created and led by Mazzini, who furthered nationalistic feelings and was even imprisoned for the uprisings he caused. Mazzini was an idealist and envisioned a united Italy and devoted his entire life to this goal. Mazzini is also well known for creating another movement called "Young Italy", where he called all Italian patriots to join.

Cavour, the chief minister of Sardinia, was the man who brought many of these ideas together by using the establishing of new banks, factories, railroads, ships and treaties to lessen the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, and create and united, industrialized Italy. Unlike Mazzini, Cavour was a realist and was always determined to get results from the movements that took place under his rule. These strong