Chapter 37 : Risorgimento - The Resurrection of Italy The collapse of the Roman Empire had left an overwhelmingly mixed race population in Italy, incapable of maintaining the original Roman civilization because they were no longer the same people as the original Romans. So weakened, the inhabitants of Italy were no match for the ferocious Goths and other Indo-European tribes who, for over a century, marched up and down the Italian peninsula, plundering and sacking the remains of the great Roman centers at will. Successive Gothic invaders - including an invasion from across the Mediterranean by Gothic Vandals from present day Algeria - slowly but surely decimated the mixed race population, which went into dramatic decline when supplies from the former empire's territories dried up. The Eastern Roman Empire, or Byzantium, paid Germanic mercenaries to re-occupy Italy from time to time, but all these attempts to re-establish the Western Empire in Italy fell on stony ground for the simple reason that the Romans themselves no longer existed. THE LOMBARDS DRIVE "LATINS" INTO THE FOOT OF ITALY While most of the marauding Goths and other Indo-European tribes did not stay in Italy, finally one invading tribe of Germanics did - the Lombards. This tribe crossed the Alps from the north and occupied all of northern Italy in 572 AD, driving many of the now depleted mixed race population down into the southern part of Italy and Sicily, where their descendants can be seen to this day, creating what is in reality a bi-racial state in Italy. The settlement of northern Italy by a new Indo-European or Germanic tribe was to be the most important racial change in Italy since the fall of the Romans themselves. The Lombard king, Alboin, made Pavia into his capital city and from that city the Lombards launched military campaigns which eventually drove the Byzantines out of all but the southernmost part of Italy and the city state of Ravenna in the north. After Alboin's death in 572, the Lombards for a time had no king. Regional leaders, known as duces, emerged and created the basis of the Italian dukedoms which were to feature so greatly in later Italian history.
THE FRANKS INVADE UNDER CHARLEMAGNE The Lombards were fairly antagonistic towards the Pope in Rome - some were still decidedly pagan and others were followers of the Catholic declared heretical cult of Arianism. This was to lead to the Frankish king and fanatic Catholic Charlemagne, to invade northern Italy in 774 AD and subdue the Lombards. This invasion by yet another Germanic tribe boosted the Nordic population ratio in north Italy even more. MOORS INVADE SOUTHERN ITALY CIRCA 800 AD In the south of Italy however, the already mixed race population was subjected to a new non-White Muslim invasion in the 9th Century, when the Saracens occupied Sicily as part of their Jihad against the kafirs, or infidels, who were not Muslims. When the Saracens crossed onto the Italian mainland and threatened Rome itself in the mid-800s, the Pope called on the Frankish king Louis II, Charlemagne's great-grandson, for assistance. Louis rushed to Italy and with a mighty White army halted the Moorish advance. However, after Louis died the Moors consolidated their hold on southern Italy and compelled the Popes to pay tribute in return for Rome itself not being overrun. Often working in tandem with their fellow Muslims who were simultaneously invading Spain and striking into the heart of White Europe, the Saracens held on to a part of southern Italy for many years. THE SARACENS EXPELLED BY VIKING DESCENDANTS At various times the Byzantines and Lombards launched military campaigns against the Saracens, displacing them from the Italian mainland itself by 1100. However, it was only with the invasion of Sicily by the Normans - Christianized Vikings who had settled in France - that the non-White invaders were expelled from Sicily in 1127. Sicily was re-established as a Norman kingdom, which enjoyed a brief period of prosperity before the Normans in that land too disappeared into the overwhelming mix of races on that island.
By 1266, the occupying forces had become sufficiently weak through dissolution that a popular revolt in 1282 saw power on the island being passed to the Spanish house of Aragon. Nonetheless, the genetic fingerprint of the Moorish occupation of southern Italy, in terms of the mixing which took place, contributed not insignificantly to the mixed racial nature of many inhabitants in southern Italy and Sicily. However, the influx of Nordic blood into southern Italy also created a minority of unmixed White racial types in this region of that country, something which can still occasionally be seen to this day. INFIGHTING AMONGST CITY STATES AND THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE True to form, the Germanic Lombards not only created several famous cities in northern Italy, but also set to fighting with each other as well. Although each city state which developed was within itself relatively stable (relative to the rest of the country, that is - the infighting in the actual states was not insignificant), the conflict between the city states was intense. A period of conflict followed which was only ended in 962, when the Germanic king, Otto I, occupied northern Italy and was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by the Pope in that year. By that stage the Holy Roman Empire stretched from Rome northwards to include all of the virtually independent German states to the Baltic sea. WARS WITH THE HOLY ROMAN EMPERORS In the north of Italy, the feudal system had never been as firmly established as it had been in France and Germany. This led to a greater concentration of the population in the city states, and as a result, a greater concentration of power in the hands of various Lombardic princes who put up intermittent resistance to rule by the German Holy Roman Emperors from the north. The northern cities in particular defied the power of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I, who fought fierce but inconclusive wars with them. At length the Lombard League, an alliance of Italian cities, was formed in 1167 - the League beat Frederick at the Battle of Legnano in 1176, and in 1183, with the signing of the Peace of Constance, the cities of northern Italy secured virtual autonomy. THE LOMBARDS EXPAND OVERSEAS The city state of Venice, through its participation in the Fourth Crusade, obtained trading posts and colonies in the eastern lands formerly dominated by the Byzantines. Other Lombardic city states also expanded their influence, with Pisa, Genoa, Milan and Florence all establishing colonies throughout the eastern territories. Although they did not realize it, the creation of these colonies would affect the history of the world. ASIATIC TRIBE SPREADS THE BLACK PLAGUE TO EUROPE - ONE THIRD OF THE WHITE RACE KILLED The arrival in Europe in the mid 1300s of the bubonic plague, or the Black Death, as it came to be known, was the result of a deliberate act by an Asiatic tribe, who carried the disease with them from Central Asia where it had been known from at least 200 BC. One of the Lombardic trading posts set up by the Genoans in the Crimea on the Black Sea, came under attack from a tribe of nomadic Asiatics known as the Kipchaks, in 1347. While besieging the White outpost, the Kipchaks deliberately lobbed plague-infected human corpses into the town by catapult.
The disease soon struck down a large number of Whites in the outpost - from the Crimea the Genoese inadvertently brought the disease to Sicily in a ship carrying infected rats. It swept through Sicily in 1347; North Africa, Italy, France, and Spain in 1348; Hungary, Austria, Switzerland, England, Germany, and the Low Countries in 1349; and reached Scandinavia in 1350. Some 25 million Europeans were killed by the initial onslaught of the Black Death; whole villages were wiped out. The disease returned to Europe again in 1361-63, 1369-71, 1374-75, 1390, and 1400. In its course, the Black Death killed a far larger proportion of Whites than any other disease or war in history, and, through its culling effect, altered the course of world history. Without it the White population of the world would have been at least three times as large as it is now. European society was transformed by the disease, which killed roughly one-third of the entire White race between 1347 and 1351. New forms of religious behavior developed. One of the more macabre responses was the emergence of flagellants, men and women who attributed the disease to God's wrath. In an effort to appease their vengeful god, they wandered from town to town bearing crucifixes and ritualistically whipping themselves - all to no avail. AUSTRIAN DOMINATION By the end of the 15th Century, the Italian states had become the focus for a series of wars between Spain, France and Austria, which came to an end with the Habsburg Empire occupying most of northern Italy, including it into the Austrian arm of the Habsburg Empire. FOREIGN POWERS INVADE During the 16th Century, the Italian city states became prizes in the combat between the increasingly powerful centralized northern European states - they changed hands between the French, Spanish and Germans in an almost endless hand-me-round, none of which made a huge impact upon the population make-up of these territories. This state of affairs continued until the middle of the 18th Century. THE NAPOLEONIC WARS - NAPOLEON CROWNED KING OF ITALY In 1796, Italy was invaded by General Napoleon Bonaparte, later Emperor Napoleon I. The victories of the French armies led to the creation of two states in northern Italy based on similar constitutional principles to that of revolutionary France, the Cisalpine and Ligurian Republics, with their capitals at Milan and Genoa respectively. Napoleon was later crowned king of Italy at Milan in 1805, and in 1806, he annexed the kingdom of Naples for good measure. By 1810, even Rome had been included into the French Empire, which now stretched, either directly or through vassals, across the length and breadth of almost all Europe. The final defeat of Napoleon however saw the Austrians being restored to a position of pre-eminence over northern Italy, although some regions were in effect granted independence as well. THE RISORGIMENTO - REACTION TO AUSTRIAN DOMINATION The Austrian domination of Italy led to the growth of a disorganized resistance movement in that country: broadly called the Risorgimento, this movement contained within its ranks a number of widely disparate Italian patriots and groupings. It was members of the Risorgimento who organized rebellions in a number of Italian states in 1820 - all of which were suppressed by the Austrian army. Following the 1830 revolution in France, similar revolutions broke out in Italy, and once again the Austrians had to send a large military force to put them down.
GUISEPPE MAZZINI AND RESISTANCE TO AUSTRIAN RULE Charles Albert, the King of Sardinia, then one of the more prominent Italian states, proclaimed a liberal constitution in 1831, giving in to demands from his people for reforms. One of the leaders of the Risorgimento, Guiseppe Mazzini, then called on Charles Albert to forcefully liberate the rest of Italy from Austrian rule. Fearing an Austrian attack, Charles Albert then ordered Mazzini arrested. Mazzini fled into exile to Marseilles in France, where he established a paramilitary organization called Giovane Italia ("Young Italy") to launch revolutions in Italy against Austrian rule and to work for Italian unification. In response to the activities of the revolutionaries, the rulers of many states started cautious reforms. However, caught in the classic revolution of rising expectations, these reforms only served to increase demands for further reforms, instead of capping the dissent. THE UPRISINGS OF 1848 The outbreak of revolution in Vienna in 1848 served as a signal for an uprising in Milan the same year. Austrian troops were driven out of Milan and Venice in quick succession. The autocratic rulers of Parma and Modena were forced to flee. Charles Albert of Sardinia then tried to turn the situation to his advantage by invading northern Italy, presenting himself as the liberator of Italy - his intervention created a measure of stability although he personally abdicated after suffering a military defeat. His throne was then taken over by his son, Victor Emmanuel II, who later became the first modern Italian king. THE POPE FLEES The Pope of the time, Pius IX, refused to join the liberation movement. A popular insurrection in Rome caused the Pope to flee in November 1848. In his absence the power of the Pope was abolished and a full republic established in Rome itself, with Mazzini at the head of the government. The Church, angered at this, called upon the Catholic powers of France, Austria, Spain, and Naples to overthrow the republic in Rome. Despite Mazzini's best efforts and the capable military leadership of another Italian patriot, Guiseppe Garibaldi, the Austrians occupied north Italy, the Spanish invaded from the south and the French occupied Rome in July 1849, restoring the Pope once again.
Above: The creators of modern Italy - all Nordic subracial types. From left to right, King Victor Emmanuel II, Guiseppe Garibaldi and Camillo Cavour. Together these three men were to engineer the unification of Italy through conquest and diplomacy. Cavour was Emmanuel's prime minister - and also the first prime minister of united Italy. Garibaldi led much of the physical fighting personally, invading Italy from the south, forcing unity in that land. GARIBALDI AND CAVOUR Victor Emmanuel, as King of Sardinia, remained true to the liberal constitution promulgated by his father, and political refugees from the suppressed republics were welcomed in his state. In 1852, Count Camillo Benso di Cavour became prime minister of Sardinia. After leading his country into the Crimean War on the side of Britain and France in 1855, Cavour obtained the sympathetic ears of both these nations for the liberation of Italy from foreign occupation. In 1858, Cavour and Louis Napoleon drew up a secret agreement to launch a Franco-Sardinian war against Austria for the liberation of Italy - the war duly broke out in 1859. After some initial costly victories, the French withdrew from the war, which ended with the Treaty of Zurich whereby Austria ceded most of Lombardy to France, which in turn transferred the Lombard cities of Peschiera and Mantua to Sardinia. In 1860, Garibaldi, who had fled Rome for Sardinia, acquired Cavour's help in preparing a military expedition from Genoa to aid a Sicilian rebellion - Garibaldi easily took the island, and crossing onto the mainland, took Naples by early September 1860. When Garibaldi threatened to march on Rome, which was protected by French forces, Cavour, with French consent, moved Sardinian armies into the city states around Rome, called the Papal states, to prevent Garibaldi from seizing Rome by force. During this peaceful intervention, Cavour ironically caused the majority of the Papal States to be absorbed de facto into the Sardinian kingdom, achieving almost exactly what Garibaldi was intending to do anyway. THE KINGDOM OF ITALY - CAVOUR AS PRIME MINISTER In March 1861, the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed, with Victor Emmanuel II as king and Cavour as prime minister. However, both Rome, as an independent state protected by French troops, and Venice, held by the Austrians, remained outside the state. In 1862, Garibaldi went to Sicily and organized a new march on Rome, but was once again blocked by Sardinian forces. Garibaldi then launched yet another assault on Rome in 1867, but was defeated by a combined Franco-Papal army at the city gates. Finally, the advent of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 forced the French to withdraw their troops from Rome, and the city was occupied fairly peacefully in that year. In July 1871, Rome was declared the official capital of a united Italy. Venice was in the interim incorporated into the Italian state in 1866, after the Italian kingdom allied itself with Prussia during the Seven Weeks' War against Austria. COLONIES AND THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE - ITALY OCCUPIES LIBYA The united and revitalized Italy, in spite of having to carry its largely mixed race southern population, then launched an aggressive foreign policy, seizing a large piece of territory in eastern Africa called Eritrea in 1885, and then establishing a protectorate over the Somali coast. Italian troops also occupied Libya in 1911, sparking off a war with the fading Ottoman Turkish Empire. The Turks were defeated and were forced to acknowledge Italian control over Libya. Italy then concluded an alliance with Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1878, which formed the Triple Alliance made famous by the First World War. THE FIRST WORLD WAR When the First World War began in 1914, Italy balked at going to war on Germany's side. Instead, revoking the Triple Alliance, Italy remained neutral but then joined the war on the Allied side when the tide swung against the Germans. They made only minor gains against the Austrians in the north, but were given the Austrian territory of South Tyrol as a reward at the conclusion of the war. More than half a million Italians were killed in the First World War. FASCISM - BENITO MUSSOLINI Italy ended the war in social and economic chaos, with a strong Communist Party continuously on the verge of provoking a full scale rebellion, as had happened in Russia. A former socialist by the name of Benito Mussolini then became active in politics as leader of a party called the Fascists. (That name was derived from the symbol of the old Roman rulers, a bundle of sticks bound together to symbolize unity and an ax head protruding from the stick to symbolize authority, called a fasces). As the slide towards civil war between the nationalistic fascists and the communists increased, Mussolini in 1922 led a march of his party's militia on Rome, and in response to the growing anarchy and as a result of the personal bias of the Italian King, Mussolini was duly appointed as prime minister of Italy in that year.
FASCISM AND NAZISM - KEY DIFFERENCES Although Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were allies during World War II, and they are both often called Fascists, this term strictly only applies to Mussolini's followers, and not to Hitler or his movement. Essentially the reason for this are that the policies for which National Socialism, or Nazism, espoused, were completely different to that which Mussolini espoused: Fascism essentially had to do with the economic organization of the state according to nationalistic and authoritarian lines, whereas National Socialism had to do with reorganizing the state along racial lines. Anti-Semitism was also a key dividing issue: Mussolini was originally pro-Jewish, and for a long time the head of the Fascist Party in Rome was the Grand Rabbi of that city - while Hitler's movement had anti-Semitism as one of their central policy positions. Under the influence of Hitler, Mussolini only introduced racial laws and anti-Semitic policies in 1938, but they were nothing like the measures introduced by the Nazis. The difference between Nazism and Fascism has been obscured after decades of propaganda, yet it is important in the historical context to realize Hitler was not a Fascist, whereas Mussolini was. MUSSOLINI CONSOLIDATES POWER - VATICAN BECOMES MINI-STATE Initially Mussolini governed constitutionally, heading a coalition government in 1923 that included Liberals, Nationalists, and Catholics and Fascists. After the violence of the 1924 elections, Mussolini took a series of steps to suspend the constitution, making himself answerable only to the king and in 1926 suppressing all opposition parties. Mussolini then proceeded to reorganize the Italian state along Fascist lines: economically and politically. To settle the issue of the Pope's independence, in 1929, Mussolini created the independent mini-state in Rome, called the Vatican, a constitutional dispensation which has continued to exist to the present day. Mussolini's reorganization and centralization of the affairs of state meant that Italy weathered the Great Depression better than many other countries, and the scenes of mass poverty that were so common elsewhere, were not as pronounced in Italy. ALLIANCE WITH GERMANY AFTER INITIAL HOSTILITY Initially Mussolini had been overtly hostile to the Nazi government in Germany, regarding the growth of that country as a threat to his resurgent Italy. Mussolini played an instrumental role in helping to suppress a Nazi coup in Austria in 1934 by threatening intervention if Germany intervened in that country. Hitler backed down rather than face the possibility of a conflict with Italy. However, Mussolini changed his opinion of Hitler after the international uproar created by the Italian occupation and annexation of Ethiopia in 1936 - the oldest independent African state was no match for Italian tanks and aircraft, and the Italians had massacred thousands of Ethiopians as a result. Germany was the only country not to adopt a hostile position to Italy over the Ethiopian invasion, and shortly thereafter Mussolini concluded an agreement with Hitler providing for cooperation between the two countries (1936). This was followed up in 1939 with a pact promising military assistance in the event of war - the famed "Axis" or Pact of Steel. From this treaty the alliance of Italy and Germany during the Second World War became known as the Axis Powers. WORLD WAR II - ITALY CHANGES SIDES When the Second World War did finally break out, Italy duly invaded France in 1940, when the German invasion of that country was already almost complete. The Italian troops were defeated, and only France's collapse before the German invasion prevented Italy from being invaded. The Italian war effort then blundered from one disaster to the next, finally ending with Mussolini's overthrow and execution by Communist partisans after he had been dismissed from office in 1943 by the Italian king. The Fascist government was then replaced with one which not only made peace with the allies but declared war on Germany. POST WAR ITALY - MENACE OF THE SOUTH Apart from losing all of its colonial possessions, a large number of Italians died in the war. This, combined with the natural population increase of the southern Italians, which soon outstripped that of the northern Italians, meant that slowly but surely, Italy started growing darker and darker.
This process, which is by no means complete or total, was significant enough to create a virtually constant state of political anarchy in Italy. Since the end of the Second World War very few Italian governments have been able to last for more than a year in office, and a strong northern separatist emotion has emerged during the last part of the 20th Century, working hard for total separation from the obviously darker and impoverished south of that country. Violence and lawlessness, which had long since been the trademark of the dark mixed race south of the country, (the Mafia) is spreading its tentacles ever further into central and northern Italy as the racial balance shifts - this is a process which is visible to any contemporary observer. Today Italy is a bi-racial nation - most of the White population is concentrated in the north, while in the south and in Sicily, most of the population are of mixed race. The north/south division in Italy is an active point of political debate in that country, particularly on the economic level. Northern Italy is mostly urban and considerably wealthier than southern Italy, with its businesses accounting for two-thirds of the entire country's Gross National Product (GNP). Italy has also served as a major entry point for many illegal Third World immigrants entering western Europe - these developments are reviewed in a later chapter.
All material (c) copyright Ostara Publications, 1999. Re-use for commercial purposes strictly forbidden. |
