Italy, united in 1861, has significantly contributed to the cultural and social development of the entire Mediterranean area. Important cultures and civilizations have existed there since prehistoric times.
Culturally and linguistically, the origins of Italian history can be traced back to the 9th century BC, when earliest accounts date the presence of Italic tribes in modern central Italy. Linguistically they are divided into Oscans , Umbrians and Latins. Later the Latin culture became dominant, as Rome emerged as dominant city around 350 BC. Other pre-Roman civilizations include Magna Graecia in Southern Italy and the earlier Etruscan civilization, which flourished between 900 and 100 BC in the Center North.
After the Roman Republic and Empire that dominated this part of the world for many centuries came an Italy whose people would make immeasurable contributions to the development of European philosophy, science, and art during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Dominated by city-states for much of the medieval and Renaissance period, the Italian peninsula also experienced several foreign dominations. Parts of Italy were annexed to the Spanish, the AustrianNapoleon's empire, while the Vatican mantained control over the central part of it, before the Italian Peninsula was eventually liberated and unified amidst much struggle in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Origins of the Name.
The name Italy (Italia) is an ancient name for the country and people of Central Italy. Mythological roots of the name date back to a legendary ancient king named 'Italus', though a more likely origin may be from ancient Oscan 'Vitaliu' (english: 'veal'), as Italy was a land rich in cattle since ancient times. The name Italia was imposed upon the Roman Republic by the conquering Italic tribes of the contemporary Abruzzo region, centering in the area of Corfinium (Corfinio). Coins bearing the name Italia were minted by an alliance of Italic tribes (Sabines, Samnites, Umbrians and others) competing with Rome in the 1st century BC. By the time of Emperor Augustus, the multi-ethnic territory of Italy was included in the Roman province ItaliaEmpire; Cisalpine Gaul, the Upper Po valley, for example, was appended in 42 BC. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the Lombard invasions, "Italy" or "Italian" gradually became the collective name for diverse states appearing on the peninsula and their overseas properties. Pallotino claims that the name was originally derived from the Itali settled in modern Calabria. The Greeks gradually came to use the name for a greater region, but it was not until the time of the Roman conquests that the term was expanded to
cover the entire peninsula.
Prehistoric Italy.
Neolithic
Important relics of neolithic Italy are the Rock Drawings in Valcamonica, dating from about 8000 BC.
Copper Age (37th to 15th BC)
The Remedello culture took over the Po Valley.
Bronze Age (15th to 8th BC)
The Terramare culture takes its name from the black earth (terremare) residue of settlement mounds, which have long
served the fertilizing needs of local farmers. The occupations of the terramare people as compared with their Neolithic predecessors may be inferred with comparative certainty. They were still hunters, but had domesticated animals; they were fairly skillful metallurgists, casting bronze in moulds of stone and clay, and they were also agriculturists, cultivating beans, the vine, wheat and flax. It is thought the Terramare culture may be an early manifestation of Italic-speaking Indo-Europeans.
Iron Age (8th to 5th BC)
The Villanovan culture brought iron-working to the Italian peninsula; Villanovans practiced cremation and buried the
ashes of their dead in pottery urns of distinctive double-cone shape. Generally speaking, Villanovan settlements were centered in the Po River valley and Etruria around Bologna, later an important Etruscan center, and areas in Emilia Romagna (at Verruchio and Fermi), in Tuscany and Lazio. Further south, in Campania, a region where inhumation was the general practice, Villanovan cremation burials have been identified at Capua, at the "princely tombs" of Pontecagnano near Salerno (finds conserved in the Museum of Agro Picentino) and at Sala Consilina.
and as the central unit of the
Etruscan Civilization.
Etruscan civilization is the modern English name given to the culture and way of life of a people of ancient Italy and Corsica whom the ancient Romans called Etrusci or Tusci. The Attic Greek word for them was Τυρρήνιοι (Tyrrhēnioi) from which Latin also drew the names Tyrrhēni (Etruscans), Tyrrhēnia (Etruria) and Tyrrhēnum mare (Tyrrhenian Sea). The Etruscans themselves used the term Rasenna, which was syncopatedRasna or Raśna.
As distinguished by its own language, the civilization endured from an unknown prehistoric time prior to the founding of Rome until its complete assimilation to Italic Rome in the Roman Republic. At its
maximum extent during the foundation period of Rome and the Roman kingdom, it flourished in three confederacies of cities: of Etruria, of the Po valley with the eastern Alps, and of Latium and Campania. to Rome was sited in Etruscan territory. There is considerable evidence that early Rome was dominated by Etruscans until the Romans sacked Veii in 396 BC.
Culture that is identifiably and certainly Etruscan developed in Italy after about 800 BC approximately over the range of the preceding Iron Age Villanovan culture. The latter gave way in the seventh century to a culture that was influenced by Greek traders and Greek neighbours in Magna Graecia, the Hellenic civilizationItaly.
After 500 BC the political destiny of Italy passed out of Etruscan hands.
Magna Graecia.
Magna Graecia (Latin for "Greater
Greece," Megalê Hellas/Μεγάλη Ἑλλάς in Greek) is the name of the area in Southern Italy and Sicily that was colonized by Greek settlers in the eighth century BC, who brought with them the lasting imprint of their Hellenic civilization.
History
Antiquity
In the eighth and seventh centuries BC, for various reasons, including demographic crisis (famine, overcrowding, etc.), the search for new commercial outlets and ports, and expulsion from their homeland, Greeks began to settle in southern Italy (Cerchiai, pp. 14-18). In this same time, Greek colonies were established in places as widely separated as the eastern coast of the Black Sea and Massalia (Marseille). They included settlements in Sicily and the southern part of the Italian peninsula. The Romans called the area of Sicily and the foot of the boot of Italy Magna GraeciaGreeks. The ancient geographersApulia and Calabria — Strabo being the most prominent advocate of the wider definitions.
With this colonization, Greek culture was exported to Italy, in its dialects of the Ancient Greek language, its religious rites and its traditions of the independent polis. An original Hellenic civilization soon developed, later interacting with the native Italic and Latin civilisations. The most important cultural transplant was the Chalcidean/Cumaean variety of the Greek alphabet, which was
adopted by the Etruscans; the Old Italic alphabet subsequently evolved into the Latin alphabet, which became the most widely used alphabet in the world.
Many of the new Hellenic cities became very rich and powerful, like Capua, Neapolis (Νεάπολις, Naples), Syracuse, Acragas, Sybaris, (Σύβαρις). Other cities in Magna Graecia included Tarentum (Τάρας), Epizephyrian Locris (Λοκροί), Rhegium (Ρήγιον), Croton (Κρότων), Thurii (Θούριοι), Elea (Ελέα), NolaAncona (Αγκών), Syessa (Σύεσσα), BariPyrrhic War, Magna Graecia was absorbed into the Roman Republic.
The Middle Ages
During the Early Middle Ages, following the disastrous Gothic War, new waves of Byzantine Christian Greeks came to Magna
Graecia from Greece and Asia Minor, as Southern Italy remained loosely governed by the Eastern Roman Empire. The iconoclast emperor Leo III[1] and the Eastern Emperor loosely governed the area until the advent of the Lombards then, in the form of the Catapanate of Italy, superseded by the Normans. Moreover the Byzantines would have found in Southern Italy people of common cultural root, the Greek-speaking eredi ellenofoni of Magna Graecia. Although most of the Greek inhabitants of Southern Italy became entirely Italianized (as Paestum had already been in the 4th century BC) and no longer spoke Greek, remarkably a small Griko-speaking minority still exists today in Calabria and mostly in Salento. Griko is the name of a language combining ancient Doric, Byzantine Greek, and Italian elements, spoken by people in the Magna Graecia region. There is rich oral tradition and Griko folklore, limited now, though once numerous, to only a few thousand people, most of them having become absorbed into the surrounding Italian element. Records of Magna Graecia being predominantly Greek-speaking, date as late as the eleventh century (the end of Byzantine domination in Southern Italy).
Modern Italy
Today a small minority of around 30,000 speakers of Griko live in the Italian regions of Calabria and Apulia. Though modern Griko is closely related to the koine, or common Greek, which had spread throughout the Mediterranean in Hellenistic times, it is said to maintain some elements of Doric Greek, and some believe its origin may ultimately be traced to the colonies of Magna Graecia.
Romans (5th BC to 5th AD)
According to legend, Rome was founded in 753 BC by Romulus and Remus, and was then governed by seven Kings of Rome. In the following centuries, Rome started expanding its territory, defeating its neighbours (Veium, the other Latins, the Sannites) one after the other.
Italia, under the Roman Republic and later Empire, was the Italian peninsula from Rubicon to Calabria. During the Republic, Italia was not a province, but rather the territory of the city of Rome, thus having a
special status: for example, military commanders were not allowed to bring their armies within Italia, and Julius Caesar passing the Rubicon with his legions marked the start of the civil war.
The Italian "province" was privileged by Augustus and his heirs, with the construction, among other public structures, of a dense mesh of roads. The Italian economy flourished: agriculture, handicraft and industry had a sensible growth, allowing the export of goods to the other provinces. The Italian population grew as well: Three censi were ordered by Augustus, to record the presence of male citizens in Italia. They were 4,063,000 in 28 BC, 4,233,000 in 8 BC, and 4,937,000 in AD 14. Including the women and the children, the total population of Italia at the beginning of the 1st century was around 10 million. After the death of emperor Theodosius IWestern Roman Empire. Then came the years of the barbarian invasions, and the capital was moved from Mediolanum to Ravenna. In 476, with the death of Romulus Augustulus and the return of the imperial ensigns to Constantinople, the Western Roman Empire ends; for a few years Italia stayed united under the rule of Odoacer, but later it was divided between several kingdoms, and did not reunite under a single ruler until thirteen centuries later.
Middle Ages (6th AD to 14th AD).
In 476, the last Roman Emperor was overthrown by the
Germanic general Odoacer who ruled Italy until 493, largely maintaining Roman customs and culture. Odoacer's rule came to an end when the Ostrogoths under the leadership of Theodoric conquered Italy. This led to the Gothic War during which the armies of Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian won a pyrrhic victory over the Goths in Italy. The Gothic War destroyed the infrastructure of Italy and allowed the more barbarous Germanic tribe, the Lombards to take control of Italy. The Lombards established a kingdom in northern Italy and three principalities in the South. After the Lombard invasion, the popes (for example, St. Gregory) were nominally subject to the eastern emperor, but often received little help from Constantinople, and had to fill the lack of stately power, providing essential services (such as food for the needy) and protecting Rome from Lombard incursions; in this way, the popes started building an independent state. In 751 the Lombards seized RavennaExarchate of Ravenna was abolished. This ended the Byzantine presence in central Italy, although some coastal cities and some areas in south Italy remained under Byzantine control until the eleventh century. Facing a new Lombard offensive, the papacy appealed to the FranksPapal States.
The age of Charlemagne was therefore one of stability for Italy, though it was generally dominated by non-Italian interests. The 11th century signed the end of the darkest period in the Middle Ages. Trade slowly increased, especially on the seas where the four Italian cities of Amalfi, Pisa, Genoa and Venice
became major powers. The papacy regained its authority, and started a long struggle with the empire, about both ecclesiastical and secular matter. The first episode was the Investiture controversy. In the twelfth century those Italian cities which lay in the Holy Roman Empire launched a successful effort to win autonomy from the Holy Roman Empire; this made north Italy a land of quasi-independent or independent city-states until the 19th century. In 1155 the Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Komnenos attempted to invade southern Italy. The Emperor sent his generals Michael Palaiologos and John Doukas with Byzantine troops and large quantities of gold to invade Apulia (1155). However, the invasion soon stalled. By 1158 the Byzantine army had left Italy, with only a few permanent gains.
Renaissance (15th AD to 16th AD)
By the late Middle Ages, central and southern Italy, once the heartland of the Roman Empire, was far poorer than the north. Rome was a city largely in ruins, and the Papal States were a loosely administered region with little law and order. Partly because of this, the Papacy had relocated to Avignon in France. Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia had for some time been under foreign domination. The Italian trade routes that covered the Mediterranean and beyond were major conduits of culture and knowledge. The city-states of Italy expanded greatly during this period and grew in power to become de facto fully independent of the Holy Roman Empire.
The Italian Renaissance began in Tuscany, centered in the city of Florence. It then spread south, having an especially significant impact on Rome, which was largely rebuilt by the Renaissance popes. The Italian Renaissance peaked in the late 15th century as foreign invasions plunged the region into turmoil. From the late fourteenth century, Florence's leading family had been the Albizzi. The Renaissance ideals first spread from Florence to the neighbouring states of Tuscany such as Siena and Lucca. The Tuscan culture soon became the model for all the states of Northern Italy, and the Tuscan variety of Italian came to predominate throughout the region, especially in literature. In 1447 Francesco Persaliano came to power in Milan and rapidly transformed that still medieval city into a major centre of art and learning. Venice, one of the wealthiest cities due to its control of the Mediterranean Sea, also became a centre for Renaissance culture, especially architecture. In 1478 the Papacy returned to Rome, but that once imperial city remained poor and largely in ruins through the first years of the Renaissance. As a cultural movement, the Italian Renaissance affected only a small part of the population. Northern Italy was the most urbanized region of Europe, but three quarters of the people were still rural peasants.
A series of foreign invasions of Italy known as the Italian Wars would continue for several decades. These began with the 1494 invasion by France that wreaked widespread devastation on Northern Italy and ended the independence of many of the city-states. Most damaging was the May 6, 1527 Sack of Rome by Spanish and German troops that all but ended the role of the Papacy as the largest patron of Renaissance art and architecture.
Foreign Domination (1559 to 1814)
The War of the League of Cambrai was a major conflict in the Italian Wars. The principal participants of the war were France, the Papal States, and the Republic of Venice; they were joined, at various times, by nearly every significant power in Western Europe, including Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, the Kingdom of England, the Kingdom of Scotland, the Duchy of Milan, Florence, the Duchy of Ferrara, and the Swiss. of southern (Latin, “Great Greece”), since it was so densely inhabited by the differed on whether the term included Sicily or merely (Νώλα), (Βάριον) etc. Following the appropriated lands that had been granted to the Papacy in southern Italy (395), Italia became part of the and the for aid. In 756 Frankish forces defeated the Lombards and gave the Papacy legal authority over much of central Italy, thus creating the
Origins of the Name.
The name Italy (Italia) is an ancient name for the country and people of Central Italy. Mythological roots of the name date back to a legendary ancient king named 'Italus', though a more likely origin may be from ancient Oscan 'Vitaliu' (english: 'veal'), as Italy was a land rich in cattle since ancient times. The name Italia was imposed upon the Roman Republic by the conquering Italic tribes of the contemporary Abruzzo region, centering in the area of Corfinium (Corfinio). Coins bearing the name Italia were minted by an alliance of Italic tribes (Sabines, Samnites, Umbrians and others) competing with Rome in the 1st century BC. By the time of Emperor Augustus, the multi-ethnic territory of Italy was included in the Roman province ItaliaEmpire; Cisalpine Gaul, the Upper Po valley, for example, was appended in 42 BC. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the Lombard invasions, "Italy" or "Italian" gradually became the collective name for diverse states appearing on the peninsula and their overseas properties. Pallotino claims that the name was originally derived from the Itali settled in modern Calabria. The Greeks gradually came to use the name for a greater region, but it was not until the time of the Roman conquests that the term was expanded to
cover the entire peninsula.Prehistoric Italy.
Neolithic
Important relics of neolithic Italy are the Rock Drawings in Valcamonica, dating from about 8000 BC.
Copper Age (37th to 15th BC)
The Remedello culture took over the Po Valley.
Bronze Age (15th to 8th BC)
The Terramare culture takes its name from the black earth (terremare) residue of settlement mounds, which have long
served the fertilizing needs of local farmers. The occupations of the terramare people as compared with their Neolithic predecessors may be inferred with comparative certainty. They were still hunters, but had domesticated animals; they were fairly skillful metallurgists, casting bronze in moulds of stone and clay, and they were also agriculturists, cultivating beans, the vine, wheat and flax. It is thought the Terramare culture may be an early manifestation of Italic-speaking Indo-Europeans.Iron Age (8th to 5th BC)
The Villanovan culture brought iron-working to the Italian peninsula; Villanovans practiced cremation and buried the
ashes of their dead in pottery urns of distinctive double-cone shape. Generally speaking, Villanovan settlements were centered in the Po River valley and Etruria around Bologna, later an important Etruscan center, and areas in Emilia Romagna (at Verruchio and Fermi), in Tuscany and Lazio. Further south, in Campania, a region where inhumation was the general practice, Villanovan cremation burials have been identified at Capua, at the "princely tombs" of Pontecagnano near Salerno (finds conserved in the Museum of Agro Picentino) and at Sala Consilina.and as the central unit of the
Etruscan Civilization.
Etruscan civilization is the modern English name given to the culture and way of life of a people of ancient Italy and Corsica whom the ancient Romans called Etrusci or Tusci. The Attic Greek word for them was Τυρρήνιοι (Tyrrhēnioi) from which Latin also drew the names Tyrrhēni (Etruscans), Tyrrhēnia (Etruria) and Tyrrhēnum mare (Tyrrhenian Sea). The Etruscans themselves used the term Rasenna, which was syncopatedRasna or Raśna.
As distinguished by its own language, the civilization endured from an unknown prehistoric time prior to the founding of Rome until its complete assimilation to Italic Rome in the Roman Republic. At its
maximum extent during the foundation period of Rome and the Roman kingdom, it flourished in three confederacies of cities: of Etruria, of the Po valley with the eastern Alps, and of Latium and Campania. to Rome was sited in Etruscan territory. There is considerable evidence that early Rome was dominated by Etruscans until the Romans sacked Veii in 396 BC.Culture that is identifiably and certainly Etruscan developed in Italy after about 800 BC approximately over the range of the preceding Iron Age Villanovan culture. The latter gave way in the seventh century to a culture that was influenced by Greek traders and Greek neighbours in Magna Graecia, the Hellenic civilizationItaly.
After 500 BC the political destiny of Italy passed out of Etruscan hands.
Magna Graecia.
Magna Graecia (Latin for "Greater
Greece," Megalê Hellas/Μεγάλη Ἑλλάς in Greek) is the name of the area in Southern Italy and Sicily that was colonized by Greek settlers in the eighth century BC, who brought with them the lasting imprint of their Hellenic civilization.History
Antiquity
In the eighth and seventh centuries BC, for various reasons, including demographic crisis (famine, overcrowding, etc.), the search for new commercial outlets and ports, and expulsion from their homeland, Greeks began to settle in southern Italy (Cerchiai, pp. 14-18). In this same time, Greek colonies were established in places as widely separated as the eastern coast of the Black Sea and Massalia (Marseille). They included settlements in Sicily and the southern part of the Italian peninsula. The Romans called the area of Sicily and the foot of the boot of Italy Magna GraeciaGreeks. The ancient geographersApulia and Calabria — Strabo being the most prominent advocate of the wider definitions.
With this colonization, Greek culture was exported to Italy, in its dialects of the Ancient Greek language, its religious rites and its traditions of the independent polis. An original Hellenic civilization soon developed, later interacting with the native Italic and Latin civilisations. The most important cultural transplant was the Chalcidean/Cumaean variety of the Greek alphabet, which was
adopted by the Etruscans; the Old Italic alphabet subsequently evolved into the Latin alphabet, which became the most widely used alphabet in the world.Many of the new Hellenic cities became very rich and powerful, like Capua, Neapolis (Νεάπολις, Naples), Syracuse, Acragas, Sybaris, (Σύβαρις). Other cities in Magna Graecia included Tarentum (Τάρας), Epizephyrian Locris (Λοκροί), Rhegium (Ρήγιον), Croton (Κρότων), Thurii (Θούριοι), Elea (Ελέα), NolaAncona (Αγκών), Syessa (Σύεσσα), BariPyrrhic War, Magna Graecia was absorbed into the Roman Republic.
The Middle Ages
During the Early Middle Ages, following the disastrous Gothic War, new waves of Byzantine Christian Greeks came to Magna
Graecia from Greece and Asia Minor, as Southern Italy remained loosely governed by the Eastern Roman Empire. The iconoclast emperor Leo III[1] and the Eastern Emperor loosely governed the area until the advent of the Lombards then, in the form of the Catapanate of Italy, superseded by the Normans. Moreover the Byzantines would have found in Southern Italy people of common cultural root, the Greek-speaking eredi ellenofoni of Magna Graecia. Although most of the Greek inhabitants of Southern Italy became entirely Italianized (as Paestum had already been in the 4th century BC) and no longer spoke Greek, remarkably a small Griko-speaking minority still exists today in Calabria and mostly in Salento. Griko is the name of a language combining ancient Doric, Byzantine Greek, and Italian elements, spoken by people in the Magna Graecia region. There is rich oral tradition and Griko folklore, limited now, though once numerous, to only a few thousand people, most of them having become absorbed into the surrounding Italian element. Records of Magna Graecia being predominantly Greek-speaking, date as late as the eleventh century (the end of Byzantine domination in Southern Italy).Modern Italy
Today a small minority of around 30,000 speakers of Griko live in the Italian regions of Calabria and Apulia. Though modern Griko is closely related to the koine, or common Greek, which had spread throughout the Mediterranean in Hellenistic times, it is said to maintain some elements of Doric Greek, and some believe its origin may ultimately be traced to the colonies of Magna Graecia.
Romans (5th BC to 5th AD)
According to legend, Rome was founded in 753 BC by Romulus and Remus, and was then governed by seven Kings of Rome. In the following centuries, Rome started expanding its territory, defeating its neighbours (Veium, the other Latins, the Sannites) one after the other.
Italia, under the Roman Republic and later Empire, was the Italian peninsula from Rubicon to Calabria. During the Republic, Italia was not a province, but rather the territory of the city of Rome, thus having a
special status: for example, military commanders were not allowed to bring their armies within Italia, and Julius Caesar passing the Rubicon with his legions marked the start of the civil war.The Italian "province" was privileged by Augustus and his heirs, with the construction, among other public structures, of a dense mesh of roads. The Italian economy flourished: agriculture, handicraft and industry had a sensible growth, allowing the export of goods to the other provinces. The Italian population grew as well: Three censi were ordered by Augustus, to record the presence of male citizens in Italia. They were 4,063,000 in 28 BC, 4,233,000 in 8 BC, and 4,937,000 in AD 14. Including the women and the children, the total population of Italia at the beginning of the 1st century was around 10 million. After the death of emperor Theodosius IWestern Roman Empire. Then came the years of the barbarian invasions, and the capital was moved from Mediolanum to Ravenna. In 476, with the death of Romulus Augustulus and the return of the imperial ensigns to Constantinople, the Western Roman Empire ends; for a few years Italia stayed united under the rule of Odoacer, but later it was divided between several kingdoms, and did not reunite under a single ruler until thirteen centuries later.
Middle Ages (6th AD to 14th AD).
In 476, the last Roman Emperor was overthrown by the
Germanic general Odoacer who ruled Italy until 493, largely maintaining Roman customs and culture. Odoacer's rule came to an end when the Ostrogoths under the leadership of Theodoric conquered Italy. This led to the Gothic War during which the armies of Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian won a pyrrhic victory over the Goths in Italy. The Gothic War destroyed the infrastructure of Italy and allowed the more barbarous Germanic tribe, the Lombards to take control of Italy. The Lombards established a kingdom in northern Italy and three principalities in the South. After the Lombard invasion, the popes (for example, St. Gregory) were nominally subject to the eastern emperor, but often received little help from Constantinople, and had to fill the lack of stately power, providing essential services (such as food for the needy) and protecting Rome from Lombard incursions; in this way, the popes started building an independent state. In 751 the Lombards seized RavennaExarchate of Ravenna was abolished. This ended the Byzantine presence in central Italy, although some coastal cities and some areas in south Italy remained under Byzantine control until the eleventh century. Facing a new Lombard offensive, the papacy appealed to the FranksPapal States.The age of Charlemagne was therefore one of stability for Italy, though it was generally dominated by non-Italian interests. The 11th century signed the end of the darkest period in the Middle Ages. Trade slowly increased, especially on the seas where the four Italian cities of Amalfi, Pisa, Genoa and Venice
became major powers. The papacy regained its authority, and started a long struggle with the empire, about both ecclesiastical and secular matter. The first episode was the Investiture controversy. In the twelfth century those Italian cities which lay in the Holy Roman Empire launched a successful effort to win autonomy from the Holy Roman Empire; this made north Italy a land of quasi-independent or independent city-states until the 19th century. In 1155 the Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Komnenos attempted to invade southern Italy. The Emperor sent his generals Michael Palaiologos and John Doukas with Byzantine troops and large quantities of gold to invade Apulia (1155). However, the invasion soon stalled. By 1158 the Byzantine army had left Italy, with only a few permanent gains.Renaissance (15th AD to 16th AD)
By the late Middle Ages, central and southern Italy, once the heartland of the Roman Empire, was far poorer than the north. Rome was a city largely in ruins, and the Papal States were a loosely administered region with little law and order. Partly because of this, the Papacy had relocated to Avignon in France. Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia had for some time been under foreign domination. The Italian trade routes that covered the Mediterranean and beyond were major conduits of culture and knowledge. The city-states of Italy expanded greatly during this period and grew in power to become de facto fully independent of the Holy Roman Empire.
The Italian Renaissance began in Tuscany, centered in the city of Florence. It then spread south, having an especially significant impact on Rome, which was largely rebuilt by the Renaissance popes. The Italian Renaissance peaked in the late 15th century as foreign invasions plunged the region into turmoil. From the late fourteenth century, Florence's leading family had been the Albizzi. The Renaissance ideals first spread from Florence to the neighbouring states of Tuscany such as Siena and Lucca. The Tuscan culture soon became the model for all the states of Northern Italy, and the Tuscan variety of Italian came to predominate throughout the region, especially in literature. In 1447 Francesco Persaliano came to power in Milan and rapidly transformed that still medieval city into a major centre of art and learning. Venice, one of the wealthiest cities due to its control of the Mediterranean Sea, also became a centre for Renaissance culture, especially architecture. In 1478 the Papacy returned to Rome, but that once imperial city remained poor and largely in ruins through the first years of the Renaissance. As a cultural movement, the Italian Renaissance affected only a small part of the population. Northern Italy was the most urbanized region of Europe, but three quarters of the people were still rural peasants.
A series of foreign invasions of Italy known as the Italian Wars would continue for several decades. These began with the 1494 invasion by France that wreaked widespread devastation on Northern Italy and ended the independence of many of the city-states. Most damaging was the May 6, 1527 Sack of Rome by Spanish and German troops that all but ended the role of the Papacy as the largest patron of Renaissance art and architecture.
Foreign Domination (1559 to 1814)
The War of the League of Cambrai was a major conflict in the Italian Wars. The principal participants of the war were France, the Papal States, and the Republic of Venice; they were joined, at various times, by nearly every significant power in Western Europe, including Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, the Kingdom of England, the Kingdom of Scotland, the Duchy of Milan, Florence, the Duchy of Ferrara, and the Swiss. of southern (Latin, “Great Greece”), since it was so densely inhabited by the differed on whether the term included Sicily or merely (Νώλα), (Βάριον) etc. Following the appropriated lands that had been granted to the Papacy in southern Italy (395), Italia became part of the and the for aid. In 756 Frankish forces defeated the Lombards and gave the Papacy legal authority over much of central Italy, thus creating the
The history of Italy in the Early Modern period was characterized by foreign domination: Following the Italian Wars (1494 to 1559), Italy saw a long period of relative peace, first under Habsburg Spain (1559 to 1713) and then under Habsburg Austria (1713 to 1796). During the Napoleonic era, Italy was a client state of the French Republic (1796 to 1814). The Congress of Vienna (1814) restored the situation of the late 18th century, which was however quickly overturned by the incipient movement of Italian unification.
The Black Death repeatedly returned to haunt Italy throughout the 14th to 17th centuries. The plague of 1575–77 claimed some 50,000 victims in Venice. In the first half of the 17th century a plague claimed some 1,730,000 victims, or about 14% of Italy’s population. The Great Plague of Milan occurred from 1629 through 1631 in northern Italy, with the cities of Lombardy and Venice experiencing particularly high death rates. In 1656 the plague killed about half of Naples' 300,000 inhabitants.
Unification (1814 to 1861)
The Risorgimento was the political and social process that unified different states of the Italian peninsula into the single nation of Italy.
It is difficult to pin down exact dates for the beginning and end of Italian reunification, but most scholars agree that it began with the end of Napoleonic rule and the Congress of Vienna in 1815, and approximately ended with the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, though the last "città irredente" did not join the Kingdom of Italy until the Italian victory in World War I.
Monarchy, Fascism & World Wars (1861-1945)
Italy became a nation-state belatedly — on March 17, 1861, when most of the states of the peninsula were united under king Victor Emmanuel II of the Savoy dynasty, which ruled over Piedmont. The architects of Italian unification were Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, the Chief Minister of Victor Emmanuel, and Giuseppe Garibaldi, a general and national hero. Rome itself remained for a decade under the Papacy, and became part of the Kingdom of Italy only on September 20, 1870, the final date of Italian unification. The Vatican is now an independent enclave surrounded by Italy, as is San Marino.
World War I
At the beginning of World War I Italy remained neutral. The Italian government claimed that the Triple Alliance was only for defensive purposes. Therefore, the Triple Alliance did not apply to a war that was started by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. However, both the central empires and the Triple Entente continued efforts to attract Italy on their side. In April 1915, the Italian government agreed to sign the London Pact and to declare war on the Austro-Hungarian Empire in exchange for several territories. The London Pact awarded Trento, Trieste, Istria, and part of Dalmatia to Italy, claimed by the Irredentism.
Fascism and World War II
The Fascist government of Prime Minister and dictator Benito Mussolini that took over in 1922 led to the alliance with Germany (the Axis) and Japan. Italy conquered an empire in Ethiopia in 1936 and did an expansionary policy annexing in 1939 Albania. Ultimately the alliance with Hitler's Germany led to defeat in World War II. The Allied Powers invaded Sicily in 1943 and gradually made their way to the Italian mainland. Mussolini was thrown out on July 25, 1943, and a new government under Pietro Badoglio and King Victor Emmanuel III joined the Allied Powers. Initially Badoglio's government only controlled the liberated portions of southern Italy. Mussolini, after being rescued by the Germans, set up the Italian Social Republic in the north of Italy. This fascist remnant was crushed by the Allies in 1945, with Mussolini executed by Communist Italian partisans on April 28, 1945.Italy was the first Axis power to surrender.
Italian Republic (after 1945).
After the war, on June 2, 1946, a referendum on the monarchy resulted in the establishment of the Italian Republic, which led to the adoption of a new constitution on January 1, 1948. The referendum at the origin of the Italian republic was, however, the object of deep discussion, mainly because of some contested results. Under the 1947 peace treaty, minor adjustments were made to Italy's frontier with France, the eastern border area was transferred to Yugoslavia, and the area around the city of Trieste was designated a free territory. In the 1950s, Italy became a member of the NATO alliance and an ally of the United States, which helped revive the Italian economy through the Marshall Plan. Italy is a charter member of the NATO and co-founder of the European Union's predecessor, the European Coal and Steel Community. It joined the growing political and economic unification of Western Europe, including the introduction of the Euro in 1999.
The late 1960s and late 1980s became known as the anni di piombo ("years of lead (Italy") because of a wave of bombings, attributed to far-right, far-left and secret services' actions. The assassination of Antonio Annarumma, a police man in the centre of Milan, on November 19, 1969, marked the beginning of this violent period. Later came the Piazza Fontana bombing at Decembre 12 1969. The police arrested 80 persons in left-wing circles, including Giuseppe Pinelli, an anarchist who was initially suspected for the bombing.
In the late 1970s, the Christian Democrat (DC) and Italian Communist (PCI) parties worked toward the Historic Compromise, to return the PCI to the government for the first time since May 1947. On March 16, 1978, DC politician Aldo Moro was kidnapped by the Red Brigades, a far-left paramilitary group. His body was then discovered on May 9, in via Caetani in Rome, in a site equidistant between the DC and the PCI headquarters. This put an end to the compromise.
In the 1980s, for the first time, two governments were led by a republican and a socialist (Bettino Craxi) rather than by a member of DC (which nonetheless remained the main force behind the government).
From 1992 to 1997, Italy faced significant challenges as voters (disenchanted with past political paralysis, massive government debt, extensive corruption, and organized crime's considerable influence collectively called Tangentopoli after being uncovered by Mani pulite - "Clean hands") demanded political, economic, and ethical reforms. The 1994 elections also swept media magnate Silvio Berlusconi (leader of "Pole of Freedoms" coalition, which included Forza Italia, the regionalist far-right "Lega Nord" party and the far-right Alleanza Nazionale) into office as Prime Minister. However, his government collapsed after only a few months because the Northern League split out.
A technocratic cabinet led by Lamberto Dini, supported by the left-wing parties and the Northern League, lasted until Romano Prodi's new center-left coalition won the 1996 general election. In 2001 the center-right took the government and Berlusconi was able to remain in power for the complete five year mandate but having to pass through a crisis and a government reshuffle. The elections in 2006 returned Prodi in the government with a slim majority, but Berlusconi won the 2008 elections and now the center-right coalition is back in power.
Unification (1814 to 1861)
The Risorgimento was the political and social process that unified different states of the Italian peninsula into the single nation of Italy.
It is difficult to pin down exact dates for the beginning and end of Italian reunification, but most scholars agree that it began with the end of Napoleonic rule and the Congress of Vienna in 1815, and approximately ended with the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, though the last "città irredente" did not join the Kingdom of Italy until the Italian victory in World War I.
Monarchy, Fascism & World Wars (1861-1945)
Italy became a nation-state belatedly — on March 17, 1861, when most of the states of the peninsula were united under king Victor Emmanuel II of the Savoy dynasty, which ruled over Piedmont. The architects of Italian unification were Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, the Chief Minister of Victor Emmanuel, and Giuseppe Garibaldi, a general and national hero. Rome itself remained for a decade under the Papacy, and became part of the Kingdom of Italy only on September 20, 1870, the final date of Italian unification. The Vatican is now an independent enclave surrounded by Italy, as is San Marino.
World War I
At the beginning of World War I Italy remained neutral. The Italian government claimed that the Triple Alliance was only for defensive purposes. Therefore, the Triple Alliance did not apply to a war that was started by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. However, both the central empires and the Triple Entente continued efforts to attract Italy on their side. In April 1915, the Italian government agreed to sign the London Pact and to declare war on the Austro-Hungarian Empire in exchange for several territories. The London Pact awarded Trento, Trieste, Istria, and part of Dalmatia to Italy, claimed by the Irredentism.
Fascism and World War II
The Fascist government of Prime Minister and dictator Benito Mussolini that took over in 1922 led to the alliance with Germany (the Axis) and Japan. Italy conquered an empire in Ethiopia in 1936 and did an expansionary policy annexing in 1939 Albania. Ultimately the alliance with Hitler's Germany led to defeat in World War II. The Allied Powers invaded Sicily in 1943 and gradually made their way to the Italian mainland. Mussolini was thrown out on July 25, 1943, and a new government under Pietro Badoglio and King Victor Emmanuel III joined the Allied Powers. Initially Badoglio's government only controlled the liberated portions of southern Italy. Mussolini, after being rescued by the Germans, set up the Italian Social Republic in the north of Italy. This fascist remnant was crushed by the Allies in 1945, with Mussolini executed by Communist Italian partisans on April 28, 1945.Italy was the first Axis power to surrender.
Italian Republic (after 1945).
After the war, on June 2, 1946, a referendum on the monarchy resulted in the establishment of the Italian Republic, which led to the adoption of a new constitution on January 1, 1948. The referendum at the origin of the Italian republic was, however, the object of deep discussion, mainly because of some contested results. Under the 1947 peace treaty, minor adjustments were made to Italy's frontier with France, the eastern border area was transferred to Yugoslavia, and the area around the city of Trieste was designated a free territory. In the 1950s, Italy became a member of the NATO alliance and an ally of the United States, which helped revive the Italian economy through the Marshall Plan. Italy is a charter member of the NATO and co-founder of the European Union's predecessor, the European Coal and Steel Community. It joined the growing political and economic unification of Western Europe, including the introduction of the Euro in 1999.
The late 1960s and late 1980s became known as the anni di piombo ("years of lead (Italy") because of a wave of bombings, attributed to far-right, far-left and secret services' actions. The assassination of Antonio Annarumma, a police man in the centre of Milan, on November 19, 1969, marked the beginning of this violent period. Later came the Piazza Fontana bombing at Decembre 12 1969. The police arrested 80 persons in left-wing circles, including Giuseppe Pinelli, an anarchist who was initially suspected for the bombing.
In the late 1970s, the Christian Democrat (DC) and Italian Communist (PCI) parties worked toward the Historic Compromise, to return the PCI to the government for the first time since May 1947. On March 16, 1978, DC politician Aldo Moro was kidnapped by the Red Brigades, a far-left paramilitary group. His body was then discovered on May 9, in via Caetani in Rome, in a site equidistant between the DC and the PCI headquarters. This put an end to the compromise.
In the 1980s, for the first time, two governments were led by a republican and a socialist (Bettino Craxi) rather than by a member of DC (which nonetheless remained the main force behind the government).
From 1992 to 1997, Italy faced significant challenges as voters (disenchanted with past political paralysis, massive government debt, extensive corruption, and organized crime's considerable influence collectively called Tangentopoli after being uncovered by Mani pulite - "Clean hands") demanded political, economic, and ethical reforms. The 1994 elections also swept media magnate Silvio Berlusconi (leader of "Pole of Freedoms" coalition, which included Forza Italia, the regionalist far-right "Lega Nord" party and the far-right Alleanza Nazionale) into office as Prime Minister. However, his government collapsed after only a few months because the Northern League split out.
A technocratic cabinet led by Lamberto Dini, supported by the left-wing parties and the Northern League, lasted until Romano Prodi's new center-left coalition won the 1996 general election. In 2001 the center-right took the government and Berlusconi was able to remain in power for the complete five year mandate but having to pass through a crisis and a government reshuffle. The elections in 2006 returned Prodi in the government with a slim majority, but Berlusconi won the 2008 elections and now the center-right coalition is back in power.
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