In 1848, a revolt took place in Naples, which was initially successful, with Ferdinand II making some liberal concessions. However, when peasants continued to revolt for land distribution, this was used as an excuse to appoint a conservative government, and the revolts suppressed by Austria. The failure of all of these revolts showed that the conservative forces were strong. In particular, Austria had an army and the Italian unification did not.
The Austrian strength was a very important factor in the failure in the 1840’s and 1850’s. Austria were against the unification of Italy from the outset and were prepared to get involved in order to stop revolts with the aim of unifying Italy. The role family of Austria had many members on thrones in the Italian states so they did not want unification. The first real threat came in the 1848-49 revolts when Charles Albert, King of Piedmont challenged Austria, but again Metternich’s armed forces crushed the revolts at the battle of Custoza in 1848, and the battle of Novara in 1849. Through this it is evident that Italy was unable to take the first step towards nationalism, because Austria was always waiting to force them back down.
While there were many external forces acting against Italian unification, there were internal obstacles as well. For a start Italy was not one single nation. Different dialects in Italy were spoken throughout the Italian states. There were huge economic differences between the south, which was poor, illiterate and mostly rural, and the North, which was more prosperous than the south. Loyalties often lay locally, and the majority of peasants did not feel a sense of national identity. The peasants made up the majority of the population were generally not interested in unification. They felt this way, as unification would not have had tangible benefits for them. They were more interested in their immediate economic conditions. The peasants could only be used to help bring about unification when they rioted due to economic depression and food shortages.
Another major obstacle to the unification of Italy was the disagreements between the supporters of unification on the matter of how it should be achieved. Some were republicans who wanted a unified Italy as one republic and monarchists wanted Italy unified under and Italian King such as Charles Albert of Sardinia. Others wanted an Italian confederation under the Pope. Some wanted the individual states to have new constitutions before they were unified while others wanted unification in one step. There were also other groups that supported unification, such as young Italy and the Carbonari, although none had particularly widespread support. These groups failed to co-operate during the 1848 revolts, meaning that the undirected revolts were given a little more direction. Also there was no single leader for the unification movement. All of these groups created an obstacle to unification as there were conflicts of beliefs and ideas meaning that there was no direct course for the movement to follow.
Also many Catholics faced a dilemma as to whom they would support. When one of the Pope’s military advisors disobeyed orders to join Charles Albert, the pope issued the allocution, denouncing Piedmont’s war with Austria. This left many unsure of whether to support the Pope’s position or not especially as many of the nationalist were Catholic.
However these obstacles were all overcome in order to unify Italy. The Austrian problem was not overcome directly by the Italian states but via the Austro-Prussian war. In this Austrian forces were away which gave Italian states the opportunity to take states occupied by Austria.
