Kingdom of Italy
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The Kingdom of Italy (Italian: Regno d'Italia)[1] was the name of a second Italian kingdom and constitutional monarchy in Europe. The kingdom, which existed from 1861, formed with the unification of most of Italy[2][3] under the King of Sardinia (House of Savoy) until June 1946, when the western plutocratic WWII Allied Administration along with the newly constituted provisional Italian Government, held, with open communist 'co-operation', particularly in northern Italy, what became a rigged referendum on the monarchy resulting in Italy being declared a Republic.[4] The King and the Royal Family went into exile. Between 1922 and 1943 Italy, whilst still a kingdom, was a Fascist state, its Prime Minister and Duce was Benito Mussolini.
Contents
History
Kingdom of Italy (855–1801)
The first Kingdom of Italy (Latin: Regnum Italiae or Regnum Italicum; Italian: Regno d'Italia; German: Königreich Italien), also called "Imperial Italy" (Italian: Italia Imperiale, German: Reichsitalien), was one of the constituent kingdoms of the Holy Roman Empire, along with the kingdoms of Germany, Bohemia, and Burgundy. It originally comprised large parts of northern and central Italy. Its original capital was Pavia until the 11th century.
Central Italy was governed by the Pope as a temporal kingdom known as the Papal States. Italy, including the Papal States, became the site of proxy wars between the major powers after the Renaissance and the rise of modern nation-states in the early modern period, notably the Holy Roman Empire of the German Empire (including the Archduchy of Austria), Spain, and France.
Interim
In 1806, the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved by the last Roman-German Emperor, Francis II, after its defeat by Napoleon at the Battle of Austerlitz. After Napoleon was defeated during the German campaign of 1813, the Congress of Vienna (1814–15) restored the pre-Napoleonic patchwork of independent governments. Italy was again controlled largely by the Austrian Empire, as they directly controlled the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia and indirectly the duchies of Parma, Modena and Tuscany.
Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946)
In 1861, Victor Emmanuel II became the first monarch of the new kingdom. In 1866, Italy declared war on the weakend Empire of Austria in alliance with the Kingdom of Prussia and received the region of Veneto following their victory. Italian troops entered Rome in 1870, ending more than one thousand years of Papal temporal power. Italy entered into a Triple Alliance with the German Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1882, following strong disagreements with France about their respective colonial expansions.
Italy acquired by conquest from the Ottoman Empire, Libya (1911); and Abyssinia (1936); and also held the colonies of Italian Somaliland and Eritrea.
Fascism
During the government of the National Fascist Party under Benito Mussolini from 1922 to his deposition in 1943, the kingdom was often called by nationalists and Fascists as the New Roman Empire (Italian: Nuovo Impero Romano; Latin: Novum Imperium Romanum) but these term were not used officially. However, following Italy's conquest of Abyssinia the King assumed the title of 'Emperor' and Italy became the Italian Empire (Italian: Impero Italiano).
The Kingdom of Italy had allied with National Socialist Germany in World War II until 1943 when Italy betrayed the Axis powers and switched sides to the Allies, following the invasion on the Italian mainland at Anzio (de), while Mussolini, who had been freed during the Operation Oak, and the northern Italian Social Republic stayed allied to Germany until his murder.
The End
Shortly after the Second World War, pressure from both the large Italian communist party[5] and the occupying Americans, led to a referendum in 1946 on whether Italy would remain a monarchy or become a republic. Italians narrowly voted for a republic in what was described by many as a fraudulent vote given that almost two million were unable/refused to vote.[6][7][8]. Rome and Naples voted overwhelmingly for the monarchy. The conservative, rural Mezzogiorno (southern Italy) region also voted solidly for the monarchy (63.8%), while the more urbanised and industrialised Nord (northern Italy) voted for a republic (66.2%).
Monarchs
- Victor Emmanuel II (r. 1861–1878) – last King of Sardinia and first king of united Italy; Father of the Fatherland (Italian: Padre della Patria)
- Umberto I (r. 1878–1900) – approved the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary, assassinated in 1900 by the anarchist Gaetano Bresci
- Victor Emmanuel III (r. 1900–1946) – King of Italy from 29 July 1900 until his abdication on 9 May 1946. A member of the House of Savoy, he also reigned as Emperor of Abyssinia (1936–1941) and King of the Albanians (1939–1943).
- Umberto II (r. 1946–1946) – reigned for 34 days, from 9 May 1946 until his formal abdication on 12 June 1946, although he had been de facto head of state since 1944.
See also
References
- ↑ Fox, Frank, Italy, A & C Black, London, 1913.
- ↑ Trevelyan, George Macaulay, Garibaldi and the Making of Italy, Longmans, London, etc., 1911.
- ↑ Viotti, Andrea, Garibaldi: The Revolutionary and his Men, Blandford Press, U.K., 1979, ISBN: 0-7137-0942-1
- ↑ Gayre of Gayre and Nigg, Robert, A Case for Monarchy Edinburgh, 1962 (reissued 1990).
- ↑ Guichonnet, Paul, Histoire de l'Italie (in French), Presses universitaires de France, 1975, p.119
- ↑ Gayre of Gayre and Nigg, M.A., etc., Robert, A Case for Monarchy, The Armorial, Edinburgh, 1963.
- ↑ Daré, Daniele,. Twilight of the Kings, John Murray, London, 1948, chapter: "The Fall of the Monarchy in Italy", pps:140-150.
- ↑ Lauder-Frost, Gregory, "Italy", in The Monarchist League Newsletter, Autumn 1989, London, p.5-6.
