JONATHAN MARWIL. Visiting Modern War in Risorgimento Italy.

Abstract

The recent commemorations for the 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy paid relatively little attention to the so-called Second War of Liberation in 1859, which enabled Piedmont-Sardinia to expand into the Italian peninsula, a process that led to the creation of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861. Only due to the intervention of a powerful French army was Piedmont able to incorporate the Austrian Kingdom of Lombardy. On July 8, 1859, the French and Austrian emperors met at Villafranca to sign an armistice. Lombardy was handed over to the French and subsequently to Piedmont, which in turn had to cede Savoy to France. The agreement still assumed the subsequent formation of an Italian confederation of states (including Austrian-ruled Venetia), presided over by the pope. Even at this stage the two emperors did not see the future of Italy as a centralized nation-state under the crown of Savoy. Meanwhile, Austria's defeat in Lombardy set off the implosion of power in the peninsula's other states, a vacuum quickly filled by Piedmont. Rather than being a traditional military or diplomatic history of the war, Jonathan Marwil's book makes an important contribution to our understanding of its cultural and symbolic significance.