One of the major factors that contributed to Italy not being unified after the congress of Vienna was the impact of foreign influence. Before the restoration of the old regime in Italy state boundaries were rearranged a number of times, ending up with a division of the peninsula into only three parts instead of eleven states. One third, including Piedmont, was an

Foreign influence was not the only reason that Italy was not united by 1815, though. Parochialism and language were also factors stopping Italy becoming a united country, as local loyalties were more important than dreams of national unity. Educated persons remained conscious of the literary tradition of the Italian language and were aware of being Italians, but the church worshipped and administered, and the universities taught, in Latin. It was probably a factor delaying the growth of Italian national feeling the Italians annexed to their own history that of classical Rome. There was no society or newspaper catering for the whole of Italy. When academics were founded, as they were in great number in the nineteenth century, they were locally based. When the arts prospered, it was in a particular state, usually because of the patronage of the court: opera in Naples under Charles III; architecture in Piedmont in the early years of the century, and in Rome later; the commedia dell’arte and painting in Venice. In one part of Italy, Piedmont, Italian was barely known; either French or the local dialects were used. For the uneducated Italy and the Italian language meant nothing. They spoke dialects incomprehensible to people from other parts of the peninsula. Furthermore, differences of outlook corresponded with neither political nor geographical divisions. Sicilians felt the bitterest antagonism against Neapolitans, and clearly the reasons were mainly historical. Sicily had been politically separate from Naples and Italy for much of its history. It preserved the only parliament in Italy to survive into the nineteenth century. The government at Naples tended to treat Sicily as a colony, economically as well as politically. Another example of this is the account of an English traveller in Italy accustomed to something approaching uniformity of style in the architecture of his own country at any given period of its history, was astonished

Some topics in this essay:
European Powers, Austrian Chancellor, Naples Italy, Congress Vienna, Church Pope, Vienna Pope, Italy Italian, Italy Papacy, Legates Cardinals, Siena Florence, congress vienna, foreign influence, unified congress vienna, unified congress, central european powers, influence central, italy unified, restoration regime, central european, european powers, italy united, foreign influence central, influence central european, nineteenth century, italy unified congress,