What were the most serious problems facing the newly unified Italy in 1870?.
In 1861, nine states became one country: Italy. Italian unification did not come around easily, and even after Italy was unified, it was still plagued with problems: economic, political, and even religious. One obvious problem was that separately, there were states such as Piedmont-Sardinia, which were more prosperous than others, such as The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. When Italy was created, the separate problems became the problems of the whole of Italy, and in turn of the new Italian government. Furthermore, as Massimo d'Azeglio said, "we have made Italy; now we must make Italians" (The Economist). This quote effectively shows the feelings of many Italians after Unification: they simply didn't feel Italian. The Italians may have been united geographically, but they were far from being emotionally united. The essay will be divided into three parts: political, economic, and religious problems. .
A very limited amount of the population could vote, and this gave rise to some problems. "Adding to this the inevitable percentage of those who through ignorance or negligence never voted, the 443 members were actually elected by some 300,000 voters out of 20,000,000, or less than 700 per seat " (Hearder & Waley 157). Due to this, the same minority kept voting, which led to widespread corruption and bribery, since it suddenly became much easier to bribe voters, not to mention that if a small percentage of voters change their preferences, this will have a large effect in the next elections and in the government. This led to the Italian government going through a period of trasformismo. This meant that governments didn't stay in office for more than around two years, and frequently it was quite less. This also meant that there was no dominant political party or parties, such as in the US nowadays, where the two dominant parties are the Republican Party and the Democratic Party.