The rebellions of 1831 and their aftermath

The July Revolution of 1830 in Paris set in motion an Italian conspiratorial movement in Modena and in other Emilian towns. Two Carbonari, Enrico Misley and Ciro Menotti, put their trust in the duke of Modena, Francis IV of Habsburg-Este, who was looking for an opportunity to expand his small state. But when Francis discovered that the Austrian police knew of the plot, he had Menotti and others arrested. Nevertheless, the revolt spread to the Romagna and to all parts of the Papal States except Lazio. For various reasons the provisional governments of the insurgent cities failed to organize for a common military defense and did not receive the hoped-for help of the French army. During March 1831 the Austrian army intervened and reestablished the status quo ante. The failure of the uprisings of 1831 suggests that the program of the Carbonari had run its course.

The moderate Liberals, most of them Carbonari, had demonstrated a readiness to compromise with the absolute monarchs. They had distrusted democrats and republicans who sought to achieve Italian unification by political revolution and force of arms. Among these were the Adelfi, a secret society of the followers of Filippo Buonarroti. Ultimately, the task of organizing new cadres of democratic and republican opponents of the restoration governments fell to Giuseppe Mazzini, scion of a bourgeois and Jacobin family of Genoa. Exiled in 1830 at the age of 25, Mazzini turned away from both Carboneria and Buonarrotism and established his own organization, Giovine Italia (Young Italy). Republican and unionist, Mazzini’s organization emphasized popular participation in the national struggle but eschewed Jacobin and social-revolutionary objectives. In 1833–34 the first abortive Mazzinian uprisings took place in Piedmont and Genoa. The latter was organized by Giuseppe Garibaldi, who then fled to France. In 1834 the Austrian police identified as many as 2,000 adherents of Young Italy in Lombardy. In 1836 Mazzini, who had established relationships with democratic revolutionaries in other countries and cofounded Giovine Europa (Young Europe), left Switzerland and settled in London.

Conservative repression convinced the moderates of the futility of conspiracies with limited membership and of the necessity to educate the public about the need for change. Meanwhile, the peace imposed on Italy from 1831 to 1848 favoured economic development, which came in varying degrees everywhere except in the south. There the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies remained backward, and the growth of bourgeois landownership that resulted from the division of great aristocratic holdings did nothing to change the situation. Thus, the imbalance between north and south, to be felt even more strongly after unification, continued to increase. Meanwhile, Genoa, Turin, and Milan began to lay the foundation for becoming important European financial and industrial centres. Piedmontese and Lombard manufacturing and banking expanded rapidly. In Venetia important land-reclamation projects were completed, and in Tuscany banking and commerce flourished, especially via the port of Livorno. Throughout the country the construction of a railroad network beginning in the 1840s increased commerce and gave rise to subsidiary industries.

Economic revival made it more difficult for governments to tighten police control. In Milan, Carlo Cattaneo’s journal, Il politecnico (“The Polytechnic”), founded in 1839, argued that the progress of science and technology necessary to fuel economic growth depended upon government reforms. In the same year, a congress of Italian scientists held its first annual meeting in Pisa. Through 1847 each subsequent meeting assumed a markedly more nationalistic character. Thus, conditions became more favourable for moderates to realize their programs of increasing public education and abolishing censorship and police surveillance. In the cause of economic unification they endeavoured to standardize tolls and trade practices and to increase cultural exchange among the Italian states. They also sought to achieve representative institutions compatible with Italian traditions and with Roman Catholicism.

Vincenzo Gioberti, the most important exponent of liberal Catholicism, envisioned a new and positive role for the temporal power of the papacy. His Del primato morale e civile degli Italiani (1843; “On the Moral and Civil Primacy of Italians”) affirmed the idea of progress as the return of the material to the spiritual, of man to God. Because such progress could be realized only through the mediation of the church, Gioberti advocated an Italian federation free from Austrian hegemony and under the nominal presidency of the pope. His ideas were influential among the clergy and most Catholic intellectuals. Under different formulations, this new papalist movement was advanced by Cesare Balbo, Niccolò Tommaseo, and Antonio Rosmini-Serbati.

In the early 1840s, renewed Mazzinian attempts at armed rebellion were ruthlessly suppressed. Among these was the Calabrian expedition of 1844, organized by the Venetian Bandiera brothers and seven of their companions, who were captured and executed by the Bourbon regime. These violent acts of suppression increased the esteem that governments and the general public felt for the moderate opposition. The election of Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti as Pope Pius IX in 1846 augured well for the Papal States; his nomination derived from anti-Austrian feeling in the Curia. In the beginning of his reign, he showed liberal sympathies and granted amnesty to political prisoners. He gradually removed the most reactionary prelates from important government posts, permitted the publication of political periodicals, and finally, in 1847, established a council of state. Although only advisory, the council gave the laity a voice in the affairs of state. Influenced by the pope’s liberalism, rulers elsewhere in Italy introduced reforms. Especially important was the Tuscan press law of 1847, by which Grand Duke Leopold II removed most forms of political censorship. The reforms encouraged extremism, however, and the reactionary powers of Europe became convinced that the stability of Italy was in jeopardy. In July 1847 Austrian troops occupied the papal city of Ferrara. This intervention stimulated cooperation among Italian rulers, including Charles Albert of Savoy, whose relations with Austria had been particularly strained. While the rulers discussed reforms—especially the formation of an all-Italian customs union—and the measures needed to cope with famine in several regions, the populace began to stir.