|
In the early 1800's nationalist movements swept
across Europe, awakening patriotic feelings among
vast populaces under the dominion of foreign rulers. These movements helped fuel the Italian cultural
consciousness and sparked a unification crusade across the peninsula, known
as Risorgimento, or resurgence. Risorgimento was primarily waged
against the empirical rule of the
Austrian Empire and directly threatened long-standing political and
ecomonic ties throughout the region. As such, the Austrian
Empire and others directly benefitting from the existing
divisions forcibly opposed the movement. Over an approximate
50-year period, Italians fought three wars for independence culminating in
the 1861 formation of the Kingdom of Italy.
Despite the victory, however, many people of Italian culture
and language remained outside the offical borders of the state. This included the people
of Trentino, Gorizia, Istria, Trieste, Ticino, Nice,
Corsica, and Malta. As with the Risorgimento movement, a
grass-roots crusade began to swell within the newly
formed Kingdom to emancipate the "unredeemed" lands and
its Italian people. The movement, known as Italia
Irredenta, or unredeemed Italy, was supported by various
patriots inside the affected areas, as well as the Kingdom
itself.
In approximately
1866, the irredentist movement within Trentino officially began and appears to have been ignited by the annexation of the
Veneto Region to the Kingdom of Italy, with the exclusion
of Trentino. Although this event appears to mark the
official beginning of the movement, the actual seeds of
Trentini irredentism were sewn as as early as 1810.
In that year, Napoleon began his formation of the
Italian Kingdom, which included the Trentino Region as
one region of the newly formed state. This was
short-lived, however, as Napoleon was subsequently defeated and his
land acquisitions ceded to other powers. During this time, the
vast regions of Napoleon's Italy (minus Trentino) strived to free itself
and form an independent state, while the
Trentino area was reconquered by Austrian troops
and again ceded to the Austrian Empire. Despite the briefness of
this event, many believe the seed of Italian unity within the Trentino was planted
and fed subsequent revolutionary events. This includes the 1848
revolt aimed at seperating Trentino from
Tyrol, the 1862 attempt to unite the region with the Veneto
Region, and the 1866 liberation attempts of Garibaldi.
Over the course of
time, many Trentini entered the fray to free itself from Austrian
control. |
