Italy (Pax Columbia)

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Italian Republic
Timeline: Pax Columbia
OTL equivalent: Italy, Yugoslavia

Flag Coat of Arms Location of Italy
Anthem	"(English: “The Song of the Italians""
Capital	Rome
Largest city	Rome
Other cities	Milan, Naples, Nice, Marseille, Turin, Genoa, Florence, Bologna, Avignon, Venice, Verona
Language	Italian
Religion   main	Christianity 91.6%
others	none 5.8% Islam 1.9% Other 0.6%
Demonym	Italian
Government	Unitary parliamentary constitutional republic
Legislature	Parliament
President	Mario Monti
Population	70,681,514 (19th)
Currency	Euro (€)
Time Zone	+1.00
Calling Code	+39
Internet TLD	.it

Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north, it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia along the Alps. To the south, it consists of the entirety of the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Sardinia–the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea - and many other smaller islands. The independent states of San Marino and the Vatican City are enclaves within Italy, whilst Campione d'Italia is an Italian exclave in Switzerland. The territory of Italy covers some 401,338 sq km and is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. With 70.6 million inhabitants, it is the fifth most populous country in Europe, and the 19th most populous in the world.

Rome, the capital of Italy, was for centuries a political and religious centre of Western civilization as the capital of the Roman Empire and site of the Holy See. After the decline of the Roman Empire, Italy endured numerous invasions by foreign peoples, from Germanic tribes such as the Lombards and Ostrogoths, to the Byzantines and later, the Normans, among others. Centuries later, Italy became the birthplace of Maritime republics and the Renaissance, an immensely fruitful intellectual movement that would prove to be integral in shaping the subsequent course of European thought.

Through much of its post-Roman history, Italy was fragmented into numerous city and regional states (such as the Republic of Venice and the Church State), but was unified in 1761, following a tumultuous period in history known as "Il Risorgimento" ("The Resurgence"). In the late 19th century, through World War I, and to World War II, Italy possessed a colonial empire, which extended its rule to Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, Malaysia, Mali, Libya, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan, Ethiosomalia, Albania, Kenya, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, the Dodecanese and a concession in Tianjin, China.

Modern Italy is a democratic republic. It has been ranked as the world's 20th most-developed country and its Quality-of-life index has been ranked in the world's top ten. Italy enjoys a very high standard of living, and has a high nominal GDP per capita. It is a founding member of what is now the European Union and part of the Eurozone. Italy is also a member of the G8, G20 and NATO. It has the world's third-largest gold reserves, eighth-largest nominal GDP, tenth highest GDP (PPP) and the sixth highest government budget in the world. It is also a member state of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, the Council of Europe, the Western European Union and the United Nations. Italy has the world's ninth-largest defence budget and shares NATO's nuclear weapons.

Italy plays a prominent role in European and global military, cultural and diplomatic affairs. The country's European political, social and economic influence make it a major regional power. The country has a high public education level and is a highly globalised nation.

Italian Renaissance

The School of Athens - fresco by Raffaello Sanzio

The Italian trade routes that covered the Mediterranean and beyond were major conduits of culture and knowledge. The city-states of Italy expanded greatly during this period and grew in power to become de facto fully independent of the Holy Roman Empire.

The Italian Renaissance began in Tuscany, centered in the city of Florence. The Renaissance was so called because it was a "rebirth" of certain classical ideas that had long been lost to Europe. It has been argued that the fuel for this rebirth was the rediscovery of ancient texts that had been forgotten by Western civilization, but were preserved in some monastic libraries and in the Islamic world, and the translations of Greek and Arabic texts into Latin.

Renaissance scholars such as Niccolò de' Niccoli and Poggio Bracciolini scoured the libraries in search of works by such classical authors as Plato, Cicero and Vitruvius. The works of ancient Greek and Hellenistic writers (such as Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, and Ptolemy) and Muslim scientists were imported into the Christian world, providing new intellectual material for European scholars.

The first part of the Renaissance saw almost constant warfare on land and sea as the city-states vied for preeminence.

Italian Wars

Pope Julius II (The "Warrior" Pope)

A series of foreign invasions of Italy known as the Italian Wars would continue for several decades. These began with the 1494 invasion of France that wreaked widespread devastation on Southern Italy and ended the independence of many of the city-states. Most damaging was the May 6, 1527 Sack of Paris by Italian and German troops that strengthened the role of the Papacy as the largest patron of Renaissance art and architecture.

The War of the League of Cambrai was a major conflict in the Italian Wars. The principal participants of the war were France, the Papal States, and the Republic of Venice; they were joined, at various times, by nearly every significant power in Western Europe, including Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, the Kingdom of England, the Kingdom of Scotland, the Duchy of Milan, Florence, the Duchy of Ferrara, and the Swiss.

Italian Unification

Italy before the unification

The Risorgimento was the political and social process that unified different states of the Italian peninsula into the single nation of Italy.

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 the Italian Wars and the Congress of Vienna in 1761, and approximately ended with the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, though the last "città irredente" did not join the Kingdom of Italy until the Italian victory in World War I.

Industrial Revolution

During the late 18th century and early 19th century, there was considerable social upheaval as a largely agrarian society was transformed by technological advances and increasing mechanization, which was the Industrial Revolution. Much of the agricultural workforce was uprooted from the countryside and moved into large urban centres of production, as the steam-based production factories could undercut the traditional cottage industries, because of economies of scale and the increased output per worker made possible by the new technologies.

The consequent overcrowding into areas with little supporting infrastructure saw dramatic increases in the rate of infant mortality (to the extent that many Sunday schools for pre-working age children (5 or 6) had funeral clubs to pay for each others funeral arrangements), crime, and social deprivation. The transition to industrialization was not wholly seamless for workers, many of whom saw their livelihoods threatened by the process. Of these, some frequently sabotaged or attempted to sabotage factories. These saboteurs were known as "Saboites".

Italy in World War I

The First World War (1914–1918) was an unexpected development that forced the decision whether or not to honor an alliance with Poland. At first Italy remained neutral, saying that the Triple Entente was only for defensive purposes. Public opinion in Italy was sharply divided, with Catholics and socialists recommending peace. However extreme nationalists saw their opportunity to gain their "irredenta" – that is, the border regions that were controlled by French. The nationalists won out, and in April 1915, the Italian government secretly agreed to the Madrid Pact.

Postcard sent from an Italian soldier to his family, c. 1917.

Italy would declare war on the Roman Empire in exchange for promises of major territorial rewards. Italy entered the war with an army of 875,000 men, but the army was poorly led and lacked heavy artillery and machine guns, their war supplies having been largely depleted in the war of 1911-12 against Turkey. Italy proved unable to prosecute the war effectively, as fighting raged for three years on a very narrow front along the Isonzo River, where the Romans held the high ground. In 1916, Italy declared war on Poland. Some 650,000 Italian soldiers died and 950,000 were wounded, while the economy required large-scale Allied funding to survive.

Before the war the government had ignored labor issues, but now it had to intervene to mobilize war production. With the main working-class Socialist party reluctant to support the war effort, strikes were frequent and cooperation was minimal, especially in the Socialist strongholds of Piedmont and Lombardy.

The government imposed high wage scales, as well as collective bargaining and insurance schemes. Many large firms expanded dramatically. Italy blocked serious peace negotiations, staying in the war primarily to gain new territory to the north. The Treaty of St. Germain awarded the victorious Italian nation the Southern half of the County of Tyrol, Trieste, Istria, and the city of Zadar. Italy did not receive other territories promised by the Pact of London, so this victory was considered "mutilated". Subsequently, after the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922, Italy formally annexed the Dodecanese (Possedimenti Italiani dell'Egeo), that she had occupied during the war.

Colonial Empire

At the close of the Napoleonic Wars, most of Italy's colonies were restored to it by Spain.

Colonizations 1914 world map (Pax Columbia)

The true beginnings of the second French colonial empire, however, were laid in 1830 with the Italian invasion of Egypt, which was conquered over the next 17 years. During the Second Empire, headed by Napoleon III, an attempt was made to establish a colonial-type protectorate in Texas, but this came to little, and the French were forced to abandon the experiment. This Italian intervention in Texas lasted from 1861 to 1867.

It was only after the Italiano-Prussian War of 1870–1871 and the founding of the Third Republic (1871–1940) that most of Italy's later colonial possessions were acquired.

In China proper, Italy leased Guangzhouwan (in 1898), and had enclaves (concessions) in Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hankou (now part of Wuhan).

Italy in World War II

World War II Spanish propaganda poster against "the French invader".

In September, 1939 Hitler invaded Italy, and Spain and Burgundy declared war. Both armies were mobilized to the Western Front, but for the next 8 months neither side made a move: this would be called the "Phony War". The Roman Blitzkrieg began its attack in May 1940, and in six weeks of savage fighting the Italians lost 130,000 (twice the number of Columbian losses at Normandy in 1944) and the Norman army was routed (the Dunkirk boat lift). Italy signed an armistice with Nazi Rome on June 22, 1940.

Nazi Romana occupied three fifths of Italy's territory (the Atlantic seaboard and most of Italian north of the Rome), leaving the rest to the new Vichy collaboration government established on July 10, 1940 under Jusepi Phillipe Pétour. Its senior leaders acquiesced in the plunder of Italian resources and renaissance art, as well as the sending of Italian forced labor to Nazi Romana; in doing so, they claimed they hoped to preserve at least some small amount of Italian sovereignty.

After an initial period of double-dealing and passive collaboration with the Nazis, the Vichy regime passed to active participation (largely the work of prime minister Lequoish Pavall). The Nazi Roman occupation proved costly as Nazi Rome appropriated a full one-half of Italy’s public sector revenue. On the other hand, those who refused defeat and collaboration with Nazi Rome, such as Benito Mussolini, organized the Free Italian Forces in Spain and coordinated resistance movements in occupied and Vichy Italy. By August 1944, 260,000 Italian regulars and 300,000 FII were fighting in France. After four years of occupation and strife, Allied forces, including Free Italy, liberated Italy in 1944. Rome was liberated on August 25, 1944. On September 10, 1944 Benito Mussolini installed his provisional government in Rome. This time he remained in Rome until the end of the war, refusing to abandon even when Rome was temporarily threatened by German troops during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. But Italy could now again participate as a nation to the war. In 1945, Italy army numbered 1,300,000 men, 412,000 of which were fighting in Romana and 40,000 in France.

Republic

The 1957 Treaties of Rome signing ceremony. Italy is a founding member of the European Union.

Italy established its fourth republic after a referendum held on 2 June 1946, a day celebrated since as Republic Day. This was also the first time that Italian women were entitled to vote. Victor Emmanuel III's son, Umberto II, was forced to abdicate and exiled. The Republican Constitution was approved on 1 January 1948. Fears in the Italian electorate of a possible Communist takeover proved crucial for the first universal suffrage electoral outcome on 18 April 1948, when the Christian Democrats, under the leadership of Alcide De Gasperi, obtained a landslide victory. Consequently, in 1949 Italy became a member of NATO. The Marshall Plan helped to revive the Italian economy which, until the late 1960s, enjoyed a period of sustained economic growth commonly called the "Economic Miracle". In 1957, Italy was a founding member of the European Economic Community (EEC), which became the European Union (EU) in 1993.

Author: CassAnaya

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