Analyze political, cultural and economic background of Italian nationalism.

 Political background of Italian nationalism:

It was the French Revolution which provided a model for Italian nationalism in the closing years of the 18th century. The French occupying forces in Lombardy organized an essay competition on the subject of the best form of free government for Italy. This encouraged a debate extolling the ancient glories of Italy, admiration for France and its constitution of 1795 and schemes for Italian regeneration and unification. Metchiorre Gioia, who won the essay competition and became one of Italy's leading economists has been' reharded as "a link between the native Enlightenment tradition of practical, modernizing reform and the new Jaebian patriotism." As the old state units favoured anachronistic urban privileges it was necessary to reject While the moderate nationalists proposed a gradual process of unification beginning with the Cisalpine Republic as "a model of a self-governing Italian state" the radicals preferred unitarian and revolutionary nationalism.

Cultural background of Italian nationalism:

The idea of Italy as an entity, of Italian as a noble and beautiful lanlyage and of the common cultural roots of the Italian city states and states, however. can be tracid back to the Renaissance period and even earlier. Francisco Petrarch turned to antiquity for inspiration and solace following the decline of the two great forces of universalism - the Holy Roman Empire and the Papacy.

Though he has been hailed as a patriot, it was a purely litaary patriotism which he represented. Cola di Rienzo in the 14th century attempted ito unite the whole of Italy under the hegemony of Rome. Through the revival of ancient patriotism during the Renaissance certain ideas of nationalism began to develop among a small group of literary men. Rienzo's "proclamations of the sovereignty of the Roman people and of the unity of Italy", and his support for the common people against the aristocracy, constitute weak anticipations of ideas of nationalism and democracy. Although Rienzo interpreted the concept populus Romanus in a sense of Italian nationalism, any "parochial nationalism" was alien to him and unthinkable to pis age.

Economic background of Italian nationalism:

The Italian national movement was not based on such a strong industrial bourgeoisie as in the case of Germany. The level of economic unification in Italy prior to political unification was also on a lesser scale than in Germany, the Italian customs union being no match for the German Zollverein. Another serious economic problem was the considerable backwardness of the Italian south. Some scholars of the Italian economy between the 18th century and mid 19th century have argued that there was no "single, structurally unified Italian economy". But although Italy went into economic decline in the 17th century Italy was never like an underdeveloped region of either pre-industrial Europe or any other continent.

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