page_title: Italian unification
section_title: Irredentism and the World Wars
hierarchical_section_title: Italian unification / Risorgimento and irredentism / Irredentism and the World Wars
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Витториано, Рим, Италия English: The Vittorio Emmanuele II Monument, Rome, Italy
context_page_description: Italian unification, also known as the Risorgimento, was the 19th century political and social movement that resulted in the consolidation of different states of the Italian peninsula into a single state, the Kingdom of Italy. Inspired by the rebellions in the 1820s and 1830s against the outcome of the Congress of Vienna, the unification process was precipitated by the revolutions of 1848, and reached completion in 1861, when Rome was officially designated the capital of the Kingdom of Italy.
  Some of the states that had been targeted for unification did not join the Kingdom of Italy until 1918, after Italy defeated Austria–Hungary in World War I. For this reason, historians sometimes describe the unification period as continuing past 1861, to include activities during the late 19th century and the First World War, and reaching completion only with the Armistice of Villa Giusti on November 4, 1918. This more expansive definition of the unification period is the one presented, for example, at the Central Museum of the Risorgimento at the Vittoriano.
context_section_description: During the post-unification era, some Italians were dissatisfied with the current state of the Italian Kingdom since they wanted the kingdom to include Trieste, Istria, and other adjacent territories as well. This Italian irredentism succeeded in World War I with the annexation of Trieste and Trento, with the respective territories of Venezia Giulia and Trentino.
  The Kingdom of Italy had declared neutrality at the beginning of the war, officially because the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary was a defensive one, requiring its members to come under attack first. Many Italians were still hostile to Austria's continuing occupation of ethnically Italian areas, and Italy chose not to enter. Austria-Hungary requested Italian neutrality, while the Triple Entente (which included Great Britain, France and Russia) requested its intervention. With the London Pact, signed in April 1915, Italy agreed to declare war against the Central Powers in exchange for the irredent territories of Friuli, Trentino, and Dalmatia (see Italia irredenta).
  Italian irredentism obtained an important result after the First World War, when Italy gained Trieste, Gorizia, Istria, and the city of Zara. During the Second World War, after the Axis attack on Yugoslavia, Italy created the "Governatorato di Dalmazia" (from 1941 to September 1943), so the Kingdom of Italy annexed temporarily even Split (Italian Spalato), Kotor (Cattaro), and most of coastal Dalmatia. From 1942 to 1943, even Corsica and Nice (Italian Nizza) were temporarily annexed to the Kingdom of Italy, nearly fulfilling in those years the ambitions of Italian irredentism.
  For its avowed purpose, the movement had the "emancipation" of all Italian lands still subject to foreign rule after Italian unification. The Irredentists took language as the test of the alleged Italian nationality of the countries they proposed to emancipate, which were Trentino, Trieste, Dalmatia, Istria, Gorizia, Ticino, Nice (Nizza), Corsica, and Malta. Austria-Hungary promoted Croatian interests in Dalmatia and Istria to weaken Italian claims in the western Balkans before the First World War.
caption: The Vittoriano in Rome, honoring King Victor Emmanuel and celebrating the unity of Italy. The decision to build it was reached in 1878, shortly after the king's death that year; the site on the Capitoline Hill was chosen in 1882; and the design of 28-year-old Giuseppe Sacconi was selected in 1884. Construction began in 1885 and the monument was inaugurated in 1911, although features were subsequently added or altered during the fascist period.
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS 60D", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "ACDSee Pro 5", "Image DateTime": "2013:09:16 18:02:54", "Image Artist": "Max_Ryazanov", "Image ExifOffset": "204", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "960", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "2660", "EXIF XResolution": "300", "EXIF YResolution": "300", "EXIF ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "EXIF DateTime": "2013:09:16 18:02:54", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/400", "EXIF FNumber": "8", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Aperture Priority", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2013:09:16 18:02:54", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2013:09:16 18:02:54", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "69/8", "EXIF ApertureValue": "6", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF SubjectDistance": "0", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "30", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4086", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2299", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Bracket", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto"}