The Perfect Fusion () was the 1847 act of the Savoyard King Charles Albert of Sardinia which abolished the administrative differences between the mainland states (

Savoy Savoy (; )  is a cultural-historical region in the Western Alps. Situated on the cultural boundary between Occitania and Piedmont, the area extends from Lake Geneva in the north to the Dauphiné in the south and west and to the Aosta Vall ...

and

Piedmont Piedmont ( ; ; ) is one of the 20 regions of Italy, located in the northwest Italy, Northwest of the country. It borders the Liguria region to the south, the Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna regions to the east, and the Aosta Valley region to the ...

) and the island of

Sardinia Sardinia ( ; ; ) is the Mediterranean islands#By area, second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, and one of the Regions of Italy, twenty regions of Italy. It is located west of the Italian Peninsula, north of Tunisia an ...

within the

Kingdom of Sardinia The Kingdom of Sardinia, also referred to as the Kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica among other names, was a State (polity), country in Southern Europe from the late 13th until the mid-19th century, and from 1297 to 1768 for the Corsican part of ...

, in a fashion similar to the Nueva Planta decrees between the

Crown of Castile The Crown of Castile was a medieval polity in the Iberian Peninsula that formed in 1230 as a result of the third and definitive union of the crowns and, some decades later, the parliaments of the kingdoms of Kingdom of Castile, Castile and Kingd ...

and the realms of the

Crown of Aragon The Crown of Aragon (, ) ;, ; ; . was a composite monarchy ruled by one king, originated by the dynastic union of the Kingdom of Aragon and the County of Barcelona (later Principality of Catalonia) and ended as a consequence of the War of the Sp ...

between 1707 and 1716 and the Acts of Union between

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-west coast of continental Europe, consisting of the countries England, Scotland, and Wales. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the List of European ...

and

Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...

in 1800. The once-Aragonese

had become a possession of the House of Savoy in 1720, and it had continued to be ruled as during the era of the

Spanish Empire The Spanish Empire, sometimes referred to as the Hispanic Monarchy (political entity), Hispanic Monarchy or the Catholic Monarchy, was a colonial empire that existed between 1492 and 1976. In conjunction with the Portuguese Empire, it ushered ...

. Although the Sardinian people had been showing hostility against the new Piedmontese rulers since a failed insurrection in 1794, the island's separate status from the mainland became a problem for the local notables from the two major cities of

Cagliari Cagliari (, , ; ; ; Latin: ''Caralis'') is an Comune, Italian municipality and the capital and largest city of the island of Sardinia, an Regions of Italy#Autonomous regions with special statute, autonomous region of Italy. It has about 146,62 ...

and

Sassari Sassari ( ; ; ; ) is an Italian city and the second-largest of Sardinia in terms of population with 120,497 inhabitants as of 2025, and a functional urban area of about 260,000 inhabitants. One of the oldest cities on the island, it contains ...

when liberal reforms began to be put in force in

Turin Turin ( , ; ; , then ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. The city is main ...

, and some of them started to see their own legal system as a handicap more than a privilege. A minority of other Sardinian notables, like Giovanni Battista Tuveri and Federico Fenu, were not in favour of the idea for fear that further moves toward the centralisation of the Savoy-led kingdom might follow thereafter. King Charles Albert eventually solved the problem by transforming all his dominions into a single centralized state. A new legal system entered into force in Sardinia, and the last

viceroy A viceroy () is an official who reigns over a polity in the name of and as the representative of the monarch of the territory. The term derives from the Latin prefix ''vice-'', meaning "in the place of" and the Anglo-Norman ''roy'' (Old Frenc ...

, Claudio Gabriele de Launay, left Cagliari on 4 March 1848. The island was divided into three provinces ruled by their prefects and followed the system that had been used in

since 1815. The ultimate goal of the unionist movement was assimilationist, for it set about, in the words of the Pietro Martini, "to transplant, without any reserves and obstacles, the culture and civilization of the Italian Mainland to Sardinia, and thereby form a single civil family under a Father better than a King, the great Charles Albert". Moreover, the fusion was supposed to spur commercial development in Sardinia and, by 1861, according to William S. Craig (the

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...

consul-general at

), increase the kingdom's importance; however, the kingdom's insular part lost what little autonomy it had previously had in the process, as well as its historical title of "nation", as it had been referred to for centuries, and illustrated by the kingdom's

national anthem A national anthem is a patriotic musical composition symbolizing and evoking eulogies of the history and traditions of a country or nation. The majority of national anthems are marches or hymns in style. American, Central Asian, and European ...

. In this regard, the Fusion provoked a shift in terminology, with references to "Italy" replacing "Sardinia" instead. On the whole, the island became an even more marginal part of the Savoyard kingdom, raising the so-called " Sardinian Question" pertaining to its difficult process of integration within a single national body: more specifically, Sardinians lost their former powers of taxation and autonomous representation in exchange for the Piedmontese Parliament taking over legislative responsibility on the island and some seats in the Congress. Most of the Sardinian unionists, including its leader Giovanni Siotto Pintor, would later come to regret it. The Fusion could not improve the condition of the Sardinian notables, either. On the contrary, Sardinia's fusion into an Italian unitary state provoked, as a response, a marked increase in banditry and criminal activities against the central authorities.«L'entrata dell'isola in un grande Stato unificato non ha dato grandi vantaggi ai ceti dirigenti sardi. Anzi, ha provocato una recrudescenza delle attività delittuose e del banditismo, che affermano in maniera clamorosa - più ancora della mafia siciliana, che tutto sommato prospera su dei compromessi con il sistema statale - il rifiuto totale di entrare in dialettica con l'esterno.»

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Bibliography

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * {{cite book, title= La Sardegna e i sardi nel tempo, first= Omar, last= Onnis, year=2015, place=Cagliari, publisher=Arkadia History of Sardinia House of Savoy Kingdom of Sardinia 1847 in the Kingdom of Sardinia 1847 in law Savoyard state

See also

References

Bibliography