History Of Italy

Italy has been inhabited by humans since the Paleolithic. During antiquity, there were many peoples in the Italian peninsula, including Etruscans, Latins, Samnites, Umbri, Cisalpine Gauls, Greeks in ''Magna Graecia'' and others. Most significantly, Italy was the cradle of the Roman civilization. Rome was founded as a kingdom in 753 BC and became a republic in 509 BC. The Roman Republic then unified Italy forming a confederation of the Italic peoples and rose to dominate Western Europe, Northern Africa, and the Near East. After the assassination of Julius Caesar, the Roman Empire dominated Western Europe and the Mediterranean for centuries, contributing to the development of Western culture, philosophy, science and art.

During the early Middle Ages, Italy experienced the succession in power of Ostrogoths, Byzantines, Longobards and the Holy Roman Empire and fragmented into numerous city-states and regional polities, a situation that would remain until the unification of the country. These polities and the maritime republics, in particular Venice and Genoa, rose to prosperity. Eventually, the Italian Renaissance emerged and spread to the rest of Europe, bringing a renewed interest in humanism, science, exploration, and art with the start of the modern era. In the medieval and early modern era, Southern Italy was ruled by the Norman, Angevin, Aragonese, French and Spanish crowns. Central Italy was largely part of the Papal States.

In the 19th century, Italian unification led to the establishment of an Italian nation-state under the House of Savoy. The new Kingdom of Italy quickly modernized and built a colonial empire, controlling parts of Africa and countries along the Mediterranean. At the same time, Southern Italy remained rural and poor, originating the Italian diaspora. Victorious in World War I, Italy completed the unification by acquiring Trento and Trieste and gained a permanent seat in the League of Nations's executive council. The partial infringement of the Treaty of London (1915) led to the sentiment of a '' mutilated victory'' among radical nationalists, contributing to the rise of the fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini in 1922. During World War II, Italy was part of the Axis powers until the Italian surrender to Allied powers and its occupation by Nazi Germany with Fascist collaborators and then a co-belligerent of the Allies during the Italian resistance and liberation of Italy.

Following the end of the German occupation and the killing of Benito Mussolini, the 1946 Italian institutional referendum abolished the monarchy and became a republic, reinstated democracy, enjoyed an economic boom, and co-founded the European Union ( Treaty of Rome), NATO, the Group of Six (later G7), and the G20.

Prehistory

The arrival of the first hominins was 850,000 years ago at Monte Poggiolo.National Geographic Italia – Erano padani i primi abitanti d'Italia
The presence of the ''Homo neanderthalensis'' has been demonstrated in archaeological findings near Rome and Verona dating to years ago (late Pleistocene). Homo sapiens sapiens appeared during the upper Palaeolithic. Remains of the later prehistoric age include Ötzi the Iceman, dating to BC ( Copper Age).

During the Copper Age, Indoeuropean people migrated to Italy in four waves. A first Indoeuropean migration occurred around the mid-3rd millennium BC, from a population who imported coppersmithing. The Remedello culture took over the Po Valley. The second wave occurred in the Bronze Age, from the late 3rd to the early 2nd millennium BC, with tribes identified with the Beaker culture and by the use of bronze smithing, in the Padan Plain, in Tuscany and on the coasts of Sardinia and Sicily. In the mid-2nd millennium BC, a third wave arrived, associated with the Apenninian civilization and the Terramare culture. The Terramare people were hunters, but had domesticated animals and cultivated crops; they were fairly skilful metallurgists, casting bronze in moulds.
In the late Bronze Age, from the late 2nd millennium to the early 1st millennium BC, a fourth wave, the Proto-Villanovan culture, brought iron-working to the Italian peninsula. Proto-Villanovan culture may have been part of the central European Urnfield culture system, or a derivation from Terramare culture. Various authors, such as Marija Gimbutas, associated this culture with the spread of the proto-Italics into the Italian Peninsula.

Nuragic civilization

Born in Sardinia and southern Corsica (where it is called Torrean civilization), the Nuraghe civilization lasted from the 18th century BC to the 2nd century AD. They take their name from the characteristic Nuragic towers, which evolved from the pre-existing megalithic culture, which built dolmens and menhirs. Today more than 7,000 nuraghes appear in Sardinia.

No written records of this civilization have been discovered, apart from a few possible short epigraphic documents. The only written information comes from classical literature of the Greeks and Romans, and may be considered more mythological than historical. The language (or languages) spoken in Sardinia during the Bronze Age is (are) unknown since there are no written records from the period, although research suggests that around the 8th century BC the Nuragic populations may have adopted an alphabet similar to that used in Euboea.

Iron Age

Etruscan civilization

The Etruscan civilization flourished in central Italy after 800 BC. The main hypotheses on the origins of the Etruscans are that they are indigenous, probably stemming from the Villanovan culture, or that they are the result of invasion from the north or the Near East. A 2007 study has suggested a Near Eastern origin. The researchers conclude that their data, taken from the modern Tuscan population, "support the scenario of a post-Neolithic genetic input from the Near East to the present-day population of Tuscany". In the absence of any dating evidence, there is however no direct link between this genetic input and the Etruscans. By contrast, a mitochondrial DNA study of 2013 has suggested that the Etruscans were probably an indigenous population. Among ancient populations, ancient Etruscans are found to be closest to a Neolithic population from Central Europe.

It is widely accepted that Etruscans spoke a non-Indo-European language. Some inscriptions in a similar language, known as Lemnian, have been found on the Aegean island of Lemnos. Etruscans were a monogamous society that emphasized pairing. The historical Etruscans had achieved a form of state with remnants of chiefdom and tribal forms. The first attestations of an Etruscan religion can be traced to the Villanovan culture.

Etruscan expansion was focused across the Apennines. The political structure of the Etruscan culture was similar, albeit more aristocratic, to Magna Graecia in the south. The mining and commerce of metal, especially copper and iron, led to an enrichment of the Etruscans and to the expansion of their influence in the Italian peninsula and the western Mediterranean. Here their interests collided with those of the Greeks, especially in the 6th century BC, when Phoceans of Italy founded colonies along the coast of France, Catalonia and Corsica. This led the Etruscans to ally themselves with the Carthaginians.

Around 540 BC, the Battle of Alalia led to a new distribution of power in the western Mediterranean. Carthage expanded its sphere of influence at the expense of the Greeks, and Etruria saw itself relegated to Corsica. From the first half of the 5th century, the new international political situation meant the beginning of the Etruscan decline. In 480 BC, Etruria's ally Carthage was defeated by a coalition of Magna Graecia cities led by Syracuse.

A few years later, in 474 BC, Syracuse's tyrant Hiero defeated the Etruscans at the Battle of Cumae. Etruria's influence over the cities of Latium and Campania weakened, and it was taken over by Romans and Samnites. In the 4th century, Etruria saw a Gallic invasion end its influence over the Po valley and the Adriatic coast. Meanwhile, Rome had started annexing Etruscan cities. This led to the loss of their north provinces. Etruscia was assimilated by Rome around 500 BC.

Italic peoples

The Italic peoples were an ethnolinguistic group identified by use of Italic languages. Among the Italic peoples in the Italian peninsula were the Osci, the Veneti, the Samnites, the Latins and the Umbri.

In the region south of the Tiber (''Latium Vetus''), the Latial culture of the Latins emerged, while in the north-east of the peninsula the Este culture of the Veneti appeared. Roughly in the same period, from their core area in central Italy (modern-day Umbria and Sabina), the Osco-Umbrians began to emigrate in various waves, through the process of Ver sacrum, the ritualized extension of colonies, in southern Latium, Molise and the whole southern half of the peninsula, replacing the previous tribes, such as the Opici and the Oenotrians. This corresponds with the emergence of the Terni culture, which had strong similarities with the Celtic cultures of Hallstatt and La Tène.

Before and during the period of the arrival of the Greek and Phoenician immigrants, Sicily was already inhabited by native Italics in three major groups: the Elymians in the west, the Sicani in the centre, and the Sicels (source of the name Sicily) in the east.

It is generally believed that around 2000 BC, the Ligures occupied a large area of the peninsula, including much of north-western Italy and all of northern Tuscany. Since many scholars consider the language of this ancient population to be Pre-Indo-European, they are often not classified as Italics.

By the mid-first millennium BCE, the Latins of Rome were growing in power and influence. After the Latins had liberated themselves from Etruscan rule they acquired a dominant position among the Italic tribes. Frequent conflict between various Italic tribes followed; the best documented are the Samnite Wars. The Latins eventually succeeded in unifying the Italic elements in the country. In the early first century BCE, several Italic tribes, in particular the Marsi and the Samnites, rebelled against Roman rule (the Social War). After Roman victory was secured, all peoples in Italy, except for the Celts of the Po Valley, were granted Roman citizenship. In the subsequent centuries, Italic tribes adopted Latin language and culture in a process known as Romanization.

Magna Graecia

In the eighth and seventh centuries BC, for reasons including demographic crisis, the search for new commercial outlets and ports, and expulsion from their homeland, Greeks began to settle along the coast of Sicily and the southern part of the Italian peninsula, which became known as Magna Graecia.

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.

Many of the new Hellenic cities became very rich and powerful, like ''Neapolis'' (Naples), '' Syracuse'', '' Acragas'', and '' Sybaris''. Other cities in Magna Graecia included '' Tarentum'', '' Epizephyrian Locri'', ''Rhegium'', '' Croton'', '' Thurii'', '' Elea'', '' Nola'', ''Ancona'', '' Syessa'', ''Bari'', and others.

After Pyrrhus of Epirus failed to stop the spread of Roman hegemony in 282 BC, the south fell under Roman domination. It was held by the Byzantine Empire after the fall of Rome in the West and even the Lombards failed to consolidate it, though the centre of the south was theirs from Zotto's conquest in the final quarter of the 6th century.

Roman period

Roman Kingdom

Little is certain about the history of the Roman Kingdom, as nearly no written records from that time survive, and the histories written during the Republic and Empire are largely based on legends. According to the founding myth of Rome, the city was founded on 21 April 753 BC by twin brothers Romulus and Remus, who descended from the Trojan prince Aeneas and who were grandsons of Numitor of Alba Longa. Natale di Roma (''Birthday of Rome'') is an annual festival held in Rome on 21 April to celebrate the founding of the city.Plutarch, ''Parallel Lives - Life of Romulus''
12.2
(from LacusCurtius)

The traditional account of Roman history, which has come down through Livy, Plutarch, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and others, is that in Rome's first centuries, it was ruled by a succession of seven kings. The Gauls destroyed much of Rome's historical records when they sacked the city after the Battle of the Allia in 390 or 387 BC. With no contemporary records, all accounts of the kings must be carefully evaluated.

Roman Republic

According to tradition and later writers such as Livy, the Roman Republic was established around 509 BC, when the last of the seven kings of Rome, Tarquin the Proud, was deposed by Lucius Junius Brutus. A system based on annually elected magistrates and various representative assemblies was established. A constitution set a series of checks and balances, and a separation of powers. The most important magistrates were the two consuls, who together exercised executive authority as ''imperium'', or military command. The consuls had to work with the senate, which was initially an advisory council of the ranking nobility, or patricians, but grew in size and power.

In the 4th century BC, the Republic came under attack by the Gauls, who initially prevailed and sacked Rome. The Romans then drove the Gauls back, led by Camillus. The Romans gradually subdued the other peoples on the peninsula. The last threat to Roman hegemony in Italy came when Tarentum, a major Greek colony, enlisted the aid of Pyrrhus of Epirus in 281 BC, but this effort failed.

In the 3rd century BC, Rome had to face a new and formidable opponent: Carthage. In the three Punic Wars, Carthage was eventually destroyed and Rome gained control over Hispania, Sicily and North Africa. After defeating the Macedonian and Seleucid Empires in the 2nd century BC, the Romans became the dominant people of the Mediterranean.Bagnall 1990 The conquest of the Hellenistic kingdoms provoked a fusion between Roman and Greek cultures and the Roman elite, once rural, became a luxurious and cosmopolitan one. By this time Rome was a consolidated empire – in the military view – and had no major enemies.
Roman armies occupied Spain in the early 2nd century BC but encountered stiff resistance. The Celtiberian stronghold of Numantia became the centre of Spanish resistance in the 140s and 130s BC. Numantia fell and was razed to the ground in 133 BC. In 105 BC, the Celtiberians drove the Cimbri and Teutones from northern Spain, though these had crushed Roman arms in southern Gaul, inflicting 80,000 casualties on the Roman army. The conquest of Hispania was completed in 19 BC—but at a heavy cost.

Towards the end of the 2nd century BC, a huge migration of Germanic tribes took place, led by the Cimbri and the Teutones. These tribes overwhelmed the peoples with whom they came into contact and threatened Italy. At the Battle of Aquae Sextiae and the Battle of Vercellae the Germans were virtually annihilated. In these two battles the Teutones and Ambrones are said to have lost 290,000 men, and the Cimbri 220,000.

In the mid-1st century BC, the Republic faced a period of political crisis and social unrest. Julius Caesar reconciled the two more powerful men in Rome: Marcus Licinius Crassus and Pompey.Scullard 1982, chapters VI-VII In 53 BC, the Triumvirate disintegrated at the death of Crassus. After being victorious in the Gallic Wars, Caesar crossed the Rubicon and invaded Rome in 49 BC, rapidly defeating Pompey. Caesar was eventually granted a dictatorship for perpetuity but was murdered in 44 BC. Caesar's assassination caused political and social turmoil; without the dictator's leadership, Rome was ruled by his friend and colleague, Mark Antony. Octavian (Caesar's adopted son), along with Antony and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, established the Second Triumvirate. Lepidus was forced to retire in 36 BC after betraying Octavian in Sicily. Antony settled in Egypt with his lover, Cleopatra VII, which was seen as an act of treason.

Following Antony's Donations of Alexandria, which gave Cleopatra the title of "Queen of Kings", and to their children the regal titles to the newly conquered Eastern territories, war between Octavian and Mark Antony broke out. Octavian annihilated Egyptian forces in the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. Mark Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide. Rome thus possessed unchallenged naval supremacy in the North Sea, Atlantic coasts, Mediterranean, Red Sea, and the Black Sea.

Roman Empire

Octavian's leadership brought the zenith of the Roman civilization, which lasted for four decades. His adoption of the name ''Augustus'' in 27 BC is usually taken by historians as the beginning of the Roman Empire. Officially, the government was republican, but Augustus assumed absolute powers.Langley, Andrew and Souza, de Philip: ''The Roman Times'', pg.14, Candle Wick Press, 1996 The Senate granted Octavian a unique grade of Proconsular ''imperium'', which gave him authority over all Proconsuls (military governors). The unruly imperial provinces at the borders, where the vast majority of the legions were stationed, were under the control of Augustus. The peaceful senatorial provinces were under the control of the Senate. The Roman legions, which had reached an unprecedented number (around 50) because of the civil wars, were reduced to 28.

Within Italy in times of peace, Roman magistrates exercised the (police power) as an alternative to the (military power). Italy's inhabitants had Latin Rights as well as religious and financial privileges.

Roman literature grew steadily in the Golden Age of Latin Literature, with poets like Vergil, Horace, Ovid and Rufus. Augustus also continued the shifts on the calendar promoted by Caesar, and the month of August is named after him. Augustus' enlightened rule resulted in 200 years of peace for the Empire, known as '' Pax Romana''.

In the Principate, Italy was legally distinguished from the provinces, and along with some favored provincial communities, enjoyed immunity from the property tax and poll tax. However, under the Emperor Diocletian, Italy lost these privileges and was subdivided into provinces.

Despite its military strength, the Empire made few efforts to expand, the most notable being the conquest of Britain, begun by emperor Claudius (47), and emperor Trajan's conquest of Dacia (101–102, 105–106). In the 1st and 2nd centuries, Roman legions were also employed in intermittent warfare with the Germanic tribes to the north and the Parthian Empire to the east. Meanwhile, armed insurrections (e.g. the Hebraic insurrection in Judea, 70) and brief civil wars (e.g. in 68 AD the year of the four emperors) demanded the legions' attention. The seventy years of Jewish–Roman wars in the second half of the 1st century and the first half of the 2nd century were exceptional in their duration and violence. An estimated 1,356,460 Jews were killed as a result of the First Jewish Revolt; the Second Jewish Revolt (115–117) led to the death of more than 200,000 Jews; and the Third Jewish Revolt (132–136) resulted in the death of 580,000 Jewish soldiers.

After the 395 death of Theodosius I, the Empire was divided into an Eastern and a Western Roman Empire. The Western part faced increasing economic and political crises and frequent barbarian invasions, so the capital was moved from Mediolanum to Ravenna. In 476, the last Western Emperor Romulus Augustulus was deposed by Odoacer.

Middle Ages

Odoacer's rule ended when the Ostrogoths, under the leadership of Theodoric, conquered Italy. Decades later, the armies of Eastern Emperor Justinian entered Italy with the goal of re-establishing imperial Roman rule, which led to the Gothic War that devastated the whole country with famine and epidemics. This ultimately allowed another Germanic tribe, the Lombards, to take control over vast regions of Italy. In 751 the Lombards seized Ravenna, ending Byzantine rule in northern Italy. Facing a new Lombard offensive, the Papacy appealed to the Franks for aid.

In 756 Frankish forces defeated the Lombards and gave the Papacy legal authority over much of central Italy, establishing the Papal States. In 800, Charlemagne was crowned emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. After the death of Charlemagne (814), the new empire disintegrated under his weak successors, resulting in a power vacuum in Italy and coinciding with the rise of Islam in North Africa and the Middle East. In the South, there were attacks from the Umayyad Caliphate and the Abbasid Caliphate. In the North, there was a rising power of communes. In 852, the Saracens took Bari and founded an emirate there. Islamic rule over Sicily was effective from 902.

In the 11th century, trade slowly recovered as the cities started to grow again and the Papacy regained its authority. The Investiture controversy, over whether secular authorities had any legitimate role in appointments to ecclesiastical offices, was resolved by the Concordat of Worms in 1122, although problems continued in many areas of Europe until the end of the medieval era. In the north, a Lombard League of communes launched a successful effort to win autonomy from the Holy Roman Empire, defeating Emperor Frederick Barbarossa at the Battle of Legnano in 1176. In the south, the Normans occupied the Lombard and Byzantine possessions.
The few independent city-states were also subdued. During the same period, the Normans ended Muslim rule in Sicily. In 1130, Roger II of Sicily began his rule as the first king of the Norman Kingdom of Sicily; he had succeeded in uniting all the Norman conquests in Southern Italy into one kingdom with a strong centralized government. In 1155, Emperor Manuel Komnenos attempted to regain Southern Italy, but the attempt failed and in 1158 the Byzantines left Italy. The Norman Kingdom lasted until 1194 when Sicily was claimed by the German Hohenstaufen Dynasty.

Between the 12th and 13th centuries, Italy developed a peculiar political pattern, significantly different from feudal Europe north of the Alps. The oligarchic city-state became the prevalent form of government. Keeping direct Church control and Imperial power at arm's length, the many independent city-states prospered through commerce, ultimately creating the conditions for the artistic and intellectual changes produced by the Renaissance. Northern cities and states were notable for their merchant republics, especially the Republic of Venice. Compared to feudal and absolute monarchies, the merchant republics enjoyed relative political freedom.Ferguson, Niall, ''The Ascent of Money: The Financial History of the World''. Penguin, 2008

During this period, many Italian cities developed republican forms of government, such as the republics of Florence, Lucca, Genoa, Venice and Siena. During the 13th and 14th centuries these cities became major financial and commercial centres. Milan, Florence and Venice, among other city-states, played a crucial innovative role in financial development, devising the main instruments and practices of banking and new forms of social and economic organization.

During the same period, Italy saw the rise of the Maritime Republics: Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Amalfi, Ragusa, Ancona, Gaeta and Noli. From the 10th to the 13th centuries these cities built fleets of ships for their own protection and to support extensive trade networks across the Mediterranean, leading to an essential role in the Crusades. The maritime republics, especially Venice and Genoa, soon became Europe's main gateways to trade with the East, establishing colonies as far as the Black Sea and often controlling most of the trade with the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic Mediterranean world. The county of Savoy expanded its territory into the peninsula in the late Middle Ages, while Florence developed into a highly organized commercial and financial city-state, becoming for many centuries the European capital of silk, wool, banking and jewellery. Central and southern Italy was far poorer than the north. Rome was 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 Black Death in 1348 killed perhaps one-third of Italy's population.

Renaissance

The recovery from the demographic and economic disaster of the late Middle Ages led to a resurgence of cities, trade and economy. Italy was the main centre of the Renaissance, whose flourishing of the arts, architecture, literature, science, historiography, and political theory influenced all of Europe. The Renaissance represented a "rebirth" not only of economy and urbanization but also of arts and science, fuelled by rediscoveries of ancient texts and the migration west into Italy of intellectuals fleeing the Eastern Roman Empire. The fall of Constantinople led to the migration of Greek scholars and texts to Italy, fueling the rediscovery of Greco-Roman Humanism.Encyclopædia Britannica, ''Renaissance'', 2008, O.Ed.Har, Michael H. ''History of Libraries in the Western World'', Scarecrow Press Incorporate, 1999, Norwich, John Julius, ''A Short History of Byzantium'', 1997, Knopf, Humanist rulers such as Federico da Montefeltro and Pope Pius II worked to establish ideal cities, founding Urbino and Pienza respectively. Pico della Mirandola wrote the '' Oration on the Dignity of Man'', considered the manifesto of Renaissance Humanism.

The Italian Renaissance began in Tuscany and spread south, having an especially significant impact on Rome, which was largely rebuilt by the Renaissance popes. The Tuscan variety of Italian came to predominate throughout the region, especially in Renaissance literature. Prominent authors of the era include Petrarch and Giovanni Boccaccio. Italian Renaissance painting and architecture exercised a dominant influence on subsequent European art. The Aldine Press, founded by the printer Aldo Manuzio, developed Italic type and the small, relatively portable and inexpensive printed book that could be carried in one's pocket. In the early 16th century, Baldassare Castiglione with ''The Book of the Courtier'' laid out his vision of the ideal gentleman and lady, while Niccolò Machiavelli in ''The Prince'', laid down the foundation of modern philosophy, especially modern political philosophy. It was also in direct conflict with the dominant Catholic and scholastic doctrines of the time.

The Italian Renaissance was remarkable in economic development. Venice and Genoa were trade pioneers, first as maritime republics and then as regional states, followed by Milan, Florence, and the rest of northern Italy. Reasons for their early development include the relative military safety of Venetian lagoons, the high population density and the institutional structure which inspired entrepreneurs. Venice was the first real international financial center, which slowly emerged from the 9th century to its peak in the 14th century. Tradeable bonds were invented during this period.

Age of Discovery

Italian explorers and navigators from the dominant maritime republics, eager to find an alternative route to the Indies to bypass the Ottoman Empire, played a key role in the Age of Discovery and European colonization of the Americas. The most notable among them were Christopher Columbus, who is credited with discovering the New World; John Cabot, the first European to set foot in "New Found Land" and explore parts of the North American continent in 1497; Amerigo Vespucci, who first demonstrated in about 1501 that the New World was not Asia as initially conjectured but a different continent (America is named after him); and Giovanni da Verrazzano, the first European to explore the Atlantic coast of North America between Florida and New Brunswick in 1524. Marco da Nizza explored the region that later became Arizona and New Mexico in 1539. Henri de Tonti explored the Great Lakes region and co-founded New Orleans. Italian missionaries, including Alessandro Geraldini, François-Joseph Bressani, and Eusebio Kino, played a role in establishing Catholic missions in California. Kino explored and mapped the southwest and California. In the beginning of the 15th century, adventurers and traders such as Niccolò Da Conti travelled as far as Southeast Asia.

Warfare

In the 14th century, Northern Italy was divided into warring city-states, the most powerful being Milan, Florence, Pisa, Siena, Genoa, Ferrara, Mantua, Verona and Venice. High Medieval Northern Italy was further divided by the long-running battle for supremacy between the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire. Warfare between the states was common, and invasion from outside Italy was confined to intermittent sorties of Holy Roman Emperors. Since the 13th century, as armies became primarily composed of mercenaries, prosperous city-states could field considerable forces despite their low populations. Over the 15th century, the most powerful city-states annexed their smaller neighbours: Florence took Pisa in 1406, Venice captured Padua and Verona, while the Duchy of Milan annexed nearby areas including Pavia and Parma.

The early Renaissance saw almost constant warfare on land and sea as the city-states vied for preeminence. On land, these wars were primarily fought by armies of mercenaries known as '' condottieri'', bands of soldiers drawn from around Europe (especially Germany and Switzerland) led largely by Italian captains. Decades of fighting saw Florence, Milan and Venice emerge as the dominant players. These three powers agreed to the Peace of Lodi in 1454, which saw relative calm brought to the region for the next forty years. At sea, the main contenders were Pisa, Genoa, and Venice, but after a long conflict, the Genoese succeeded in reducing Pisa. Venice proved to be a more powerful adversary, and with the decline of Genoese power during the 15th century Venice became pre-eminent on the seas.

Foreign invasions of Italy (the Italian Wars) began with the 1494 invasion by France that wreaked widespread devastation on Northern Italy and ended the independence of many of the city-states. Originally arising from dynastic disputes over the Duchy of Milan and the Kingdom of Naples, the wars rapidly became a general struggle for power and territory. The French were routed by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Battle of Pavia (1525) and again in the War of the League of Cognac (1526–30). After years of inconclusive fighting and involvement by multiple countries, with the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis (1559), France renounced its claims in Italy, while the south of Italy remained under Spanish rule.

Much of Venice's hinterland (but not the city itself) was devastated by the Turks in 1499 and plundered by the League of Cambrai in 1509. Worst of all was the 6 May 1527 Sack of Rome by mutinous German mercenaries that all but ended the role of the Papacy as the largest patron of Renaissance art. The long Siege of Florence (1529–1530) brought the destruction of its suburbs, the ruin of its export business and the confiscation of its citizens' wealth. Italy's urban population halved; ransoms paid to the invaders and emergency taxes drained the finances. The wool and silk industries of Lombardy collapsed when their looms were wrecked by invaders. The defensive tactic of scorched earth only slightly delayed the invaders, and made the recovery much longer.

From the Counter-Reformation to Napoleon

The 17th century was a tumultuous period in Italian history, marked by deep political and social changes. These included the increase of Papal power in the peninsula and the influence of the Catholic Church at the peak of the Counter Reformation, the Catholic reaction against the Protestant Reformation. From the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis to the War of the Spanish Succession, the Spanish Habsburgs ruled Sicily, Naples, and Milan; these territories passed to the Austrian Habsburgs in 1700.

Despite important artistic and scientific achievements, such as the discoveries of Galileo and the flourishing of Baroque style, after 1600 Italy experienced an economic catastrophe. In 1600 Northern and Central Italy comprised one of the most advanced industrial areas of Europe, with an exceptionally high standard of living. By 1870 Italy was an economically backward and depressed area; its industrial structure had almost collapsed, its population was too high for its resources, its economy had become primarily agricultural. Wars, political fractionalization, limited fiscal capacity and the shift of world trade to north-western Europe and the Americas were key factors.
The growing importance of the Atlantic trade undermined the importance of Venice as a commercial hub. Spain's involvement in the Thirty Years' War (1618–48), financed in part by taxes on its Italian possessions, heavily drained the commerce and agriculture of the south; as Spain declined, it dragged its Italian domains down with it, spreading conflicts and revolts (such as the Neapolitan 1647 tax-related " Revolt of Masaniello").
The plague of 1630 that ravaged northern Italy, notably Milan and Venice, claimed possibly one million lives, or about 25% of the population. The plague of 1656 killed up to 43% of the population of the Kingdom of Naples. Historians believe the dramatic reduction in population (and, thus, in economic activity) contributed to Italy's downfall as a major commercial and political centre. By one estimate, while in 1500 the GDP of Italy was 106% of the French GDP, by 1700 it was only 75% of it.

18th century

The War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714) was triggered by the death without issue of the last Habsburg king of Spain, Charles II, who fixed the Spanish inheritance on Philip, Duke of Anjou, the grandson of King Louis XIV of France. In face of the threat of a French hegemony over much of Europe, a Grand Alliance between Austria, England, the Dutch Republic and other minor powers (including the Duchy of Savoy) was signed in The Hague. The Alliance successfully fought and defeated the Franco-Spanish "Party of the Two Crowns", and the subsequent Treaty of Utrecht and Rastatt passed control of much of Italy (Milan, Naples and Sardinia) from Spain to Austria, while Sicily was ceded to the Duchy of Savoy. Spain attempted to retake territories in Italy and to claim the French throne in the War of the Quadruple Alliance (1718–1720), but was again defeated. As a result of the Treaty of The Hague, Spain agreed to abandon its Italian claims, while Duke Victor Amadeus II of Savoy agreed to exchange Sicily with Austria for the island of Sardinia, after which he was known as the King of Sardinia. The Spaniards regained Naples and Sicily following the Battle of Bitonto in 1738. Corsica passed from the Republic of Genoa to France in 1769 after the Treaty of Versailles. Italian was the official language of Corsica until 1859.

Age of Napoleon

At the end of the 18th century, Italy was almost in the same political conditions as in the 16th century; the main differences were that Austria had replaced Spain as the dominant foreign power (though the War of the Polish Succession resulted in the re-installment of the Spanish in the south, as the House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies), and that the dukes of Savoy had become kings of Sardinia. In 1796 the French Army of Italy under Napoleon invaded Italy, with the aims of forcing the First Coalition to abandon Sardinia and forcing Austria to withdraw from Italy. Within only two weeks Victor Amadeus III of Sardinia was forced to sign an armistice. Napoleon then entered Milan, where he was welcomed as a liberator. Subsequently, beating off Austrian counterattacks and continuing to advance, he arrived in the Veneto in 1797. Here occurred the Veronese Easters, an act of rebellion against French oppression, that tied down Napoleon for about a week.

Napoleon conquered most of Italy in 1797–99. He set up a series of new republics, complete with new codes of law and abolition of old feudal privileges. Napoleon's Cisalpine Republic was centered on Milan. Genoa the city became a republic while its hinterland became the Ligurian Republic. The Roman Republic was formed out of the papal holdings while the pope himself was sent to France. The Neapolitan Republic was formed around Naples, but it lasted only five months before the Coalition recaptured it. In 1805, he formed the Kingdom of Italy, with himself as king and his stepson as viceroy. All these new countries were satellites of France, and had to pay large subsidies to Paris, as well as provide military support for Napoleon's wars. Their political and administrative systems were modernized, the metric system introduced, and trade barriers reduced. Jewish ghettos were abolished. Belgium and Piedmont became integral parts of France.

During the Napoleonic era, in 1797, the first official adoption of the Italian tricolour as a national flag by a sovereign Italian state, the Cispadane Republic, a sister republic of Revolutionary France, took place. This event is celebrated by the Tricolour Day.Article 1 of the law n. 671 of 31 December 1996 ("National celebration of the bicentenary of the first national flag") The Italian national colours appeared for the first time on a tricolour cockade in 1789, anticipating by seven years the first green, white and red Italian military war flag, which was adopted by the Lombard Legion in 1796.

In 1805, after the French victory over the Third Coalition and the Peace of Pressburg, Napoleon recovered Veneto and Dalmatia, annexing them to the Italian Republic and renaming it the Kingdom of Italy. Also that year a second satellite state, the Ligurian Republic (successor to the old Republic of Genoa), was pressured into merging with France. In 1806, he conquered the Kingdom of Naples and granted it to his brother and then (from 1808) to Joachim Murat, along with marrying his sisters Elisa and Paolina off to the princes of Massa-Carrara and Guastalla. In 1808, he annexed Marche and Tuscany to the Kingdom of Italy. In 1809, Bonaparte occupied Rome, exiling the Pope first to Savona and then to France.

After Russia, the other states of Europe re-allied themselves and defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Leipzig, after which his Italian allied states abandoned him to ally with Austria. As Napoleon's reign began to fail, other national monarchs he had installed tried to keep their thrones by feeding nationalistic sentiments. Among these was the viceroy of Italy, Eugène de Beauharnais, who tried to get Austrian approval for his succession to the Kingdom of Italy, and Joachim Murat, who called for Italian patriots' help for the unification of Italy under his rule. Napoleon was defeated on 6 April 1814. The resulting Congress of Vienna (1814) restored a situation close to that of 1795, dividing Italy between Austria (in the north-east and Lombardy), the Kingdom of Sardinia, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (in the south and in Sicily), and Tuscany, the Papal States and other minor states in the centre. However, old republics such as Venice and Genoa were not recreated, Venice went to Austria, and Genoa went to the Kingdom of Sardinia.

On Napoleon's return to France (the Hundred Days), he regained Murat's support, but Murat proved unable to convince the Italians to fight for Napoleon with his Proclamation of Rimini and was beaten and killed. The Italian kingdoms thus fell, and Italy's Restoration period began, with many pre-Napoleonic sovereigns returned to their thrones. Piedmont, Genoa and Nice came to be united, as did Sardinia (which went on to create the State of Savoy), while Lombardy, Veneto, Istria and Dalmatia were re-annexed to Austria. The dukedoms of Parma and Modena re-formed, and the Papal States and the Kingdom of Naples returned to the Bourbons. The political and social events in the restoration period of Italy (1815–1835) led to popular uprisings throughout the peninsula and greatly shaped what would become the Italian Wars of Independence. All this led to a new Kingdom of Italy and Italian unification. Frederick Artz emphasizes the benefits the Italians gained:
:For nearly two decades the Italians had the excellent codes of law, a fair system of taxation, a better economic situation, and more religious and intellectual toleration than they had known for centuries. ... Everywhere old physical, economic, and intellectual barriers had been thrown down and the Italians had begun to be aware of a common nationality.

French historian Hippolyte Taine stated:

Napoleon, far more Italian than French, Italian by race, by instinct, imagination, and souvenir, considers in his plan the future of Italy, and, on casting up the final accounts of his reign, we find that the net loss is for France and the net profit is for Italy.

Unification (1814–1861)

The '' Risorgimento'' was the political and social process that unified different states of the Italian Peninsula. 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 until the Italian victory in World War I.

In 1820, Spaniards successfully revolted over disputes about their Constitution, which influenced the development of a similar movement in Italy. A regiment in the army of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, commanded by Guglielmo Pepe, a ''Carbonaro'' (member of the secret republican organization), mutinied, conquering the peninsular part of Two Sicilies. The king, Ferdinand I, agreed to enact a new constitution. The revolutionaries, though, failed to court popular support and fell to Austrian troops of the Holy Alliance. Ferdinand abolished the constitution and began systematically persecuting revolutionaries, many of whom were forced into exile.

The leader of the 1821 revolutionary movement in Piedmont was Santorre di Santarosa, who wanted to remove the Austrians and unify Italy under the House of Savoy. The Piedmont revolt started in Alessandria. The king's regent, prince Charles Albert, acting while the king Charles Felix was away, approved a new constitution to appease the revolutionaries, but when the king returned he disavowed the constitution and requested assistance from the Holy Alliance. Di Santarosa's troops were defeated, and the would-be Piedmontese revolutionary fled to Paris.
Artistic and literary sentiment also turned towards nationalism; perhaps the most famous of proto-nationalist works was Alessandro Manzoni's ''I Promessi Sposi'' (The Betrothed), published in 1827. The 1840 version of ''I Promessi Sposi'' used a standardized version of the Tuscan dialect, a conscious effort by the author to provide a language and force people to learn it.

At the time, the struggle for Italian unification was perceived to be waged primarily against the Austrian Empire and the Habsburgs, since they directly controlled the predominantly Italian-speaking northeastern part of present-day Italy and were the single most powerful force against unification. The Austrian Empire vigorously repressed nationalist sentiment. Austrian Chancellor Franz Metternich, an influential diplomat at the Congress of Vienna, stated that the word ''Italy'' was nothing more than "a geographic expression." Those in favour of unification also faced opposition from the Holy See, particularly after failed attempts to broker a confederation with the Papal States, which would have left the Papacy with some measure of autonomy over the region. Pius IX feared that giving up power in the region could mean the persecution of Italian Catholics.

Even among those who wanted to see the peninsula unified, different groups could not agree on what form a unified state would take. Vincenzo Gioberti suggested a confederation of Italian states under the rulership of the Pope. His book, ''Of the Moral and Civil Primacy of the Italians'', was published in 1843 and created a link between the Papacy and the Risorgimento. Many leading revolutionaries wanted a republic, but eventually, it was a king and his chief minister who had the power to unite the Italian states as a monarchy.

One of the most influential revolutionary groups was the Carbonari (charcoal burners), a secret organization formed in southern Italy early in the 19th century. Inspired by the principles of the French Revolution, its members were mainly drawn from the middle class and intellectuals. After the Congress of Vienna, the ''Carbonari'' movement spread into the Papal States, the Kingdom of Sardinia, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Duchy of Modena and the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia. The revolutionaries were so feared that the reigning authorities passed an ordinance condemning to death anyone who attended a Carbonari meeting. The ''Carbonari'' condemned Napoleon III to death for failing to unite Italy, and the group almost succeeded in assassinating him in 1858. Many leaders of the unification movement were at one time members of this organization.
In this context, in 1847, the first public performance of the song ''Il Canto degli Italiani'', the Italian national anthem since 1946, took place.
Two prominent radical figures in the unification movement were Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi. The more conservative constitutional monarchic figures included the Count of Cavour and Victor Emmanuel II, who would later become the first king of a united Italy. Mazzini's activity in revolutionary movements caused him to be imprisoned soon after he joined. While in prison, he concluded that Italy could – and therefore should – be unified and formulated his program for establishing a free, independent, and republican nation with Rome as its capital. After Mazzini's release in 1831, he went to Marseille, where he organized a new political society called ''La Giovine Italia'' (Young Italy) seeking the unification of Italy. Garibaldi participated in an uprising in Piedmont in 1834, was sentenced to death, and escaped to South America. He returned to Italy in 1848. The creation of the Kingdom of Italy was the result of concerted efforts by Italian nationalists and monarchists loyal to the House of Savoy to establish a united kingdom encompassing the entire Italian Peninsula.

Sardinia industrialized from 1830 onward. A constitution, the Statuto Albertino was enacted in the year of revolutions, 1848, under liberal pressure. Under the same pressure, the First Italian War of Independence was declared on Austria. After initial success, the war took a turn for the worse and the Kingdom of Sardinia lost.

After the Revolutions of 1848, the apparent leader of the Italian unification movement was Garibaldi, popular amongst southern Italians. Garibaldi led the Italian republican drive for unification in southern Italy, but the northern Italian monarchy of the House of Savoy in the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia whose government was led by Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, also had the ambition of establishing a united Italian state. Although the kingdom had no physical connection to Rome (deemed the natural capital of Italy), the kingdom had successfully challenged Austria in the Second Italian War of Independence, liberating Lombardy–Venetia from Austrian rule. On the basis of the Plombières Agreement, the Kingdom of Sardinia ceded Savoy and Nice

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