Also with the country being ruled by a Liberal rule, which was upper-middle class, working class people and peasants weren’t taken into consideration and therefore were made happy and did not like the way that the country was being governed. This was a major problem because the government didn’t have the support of the majority of its own country. This led to a result of the successive governments’ inability to cope with the country’s problems and a change in government occurred nearly every two years.
With the government not being able to cope with the country’s problems it reflected the lack of national unity and the regional differences in the Italian Kingdom. This leads on to the social problems that unification brought around. There was a divide between the North and the South. Only 2% of the country spoke Italian and people still identified themselves with the states that they lived in and not as Italian.
Another problem was that Unification had left the country with a large debt. To raise money to pay back the money that they had borrowed they needed to raise taxes. The problem with this was that no one could afford to pay these taxes but a few elite people. This distanced the poor working class even further as they weren’t given the vote and were expected to now pay higher taxes. Another way of making more money to pay the debt was for industry to improve its productivity. This was not possible as Italy had an agrarian economy and with the land in the south not being as viable as in the north it was hard to produce a high income from industry. Italy had a lack in modernization and industrialization. It was hard to industrialize to make the money to pay the debt because the workforce was not educated; there were no raw materials and also no capital to start of industry and to educate the labour. This meant that wages were very low and poverty widespread. Unification worsened the matter as it brought free trade throughout the kingdom and led to the prices of the South’s agricultural products to decrease. The South suffered a great deal and its industry was destroyed.
With an ever-increasing ratio of poverty people especially in the south were migrating and peasant violence was high. This was a problem because the government had to pay out to suppress these issues with money they couldn’t afford to spend.
This lack of money also increased the problem with foreign policy and Italy wanting to become a Great Power. To be a Great Power like England and Germany you needed money. This would be spent on improving the army and navy, which were an important part of the country’s status. Also with the lack of industry and raw materials, the navy could not grow in power. Italy wanted colonies to grow its empire and status but the only places that were available were countries such as Libya, Tunisia and Ethiopia. Also there were still many Italians living outside the boundaries of the Italian Kingdom, especially in the Tyrol, Trentino and Istria, all of which were a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Italian government wanted them to move into Italy’s boundaries. These people were collectively known as ‘Italia Irredenta’. By doing this it would make relations with their most immediate and most powerful neighbour, the Habsburg Empire, difficult.
Another major problem was the Catholic Church. Before unification the Pope owned a vast amount of land in the middle of Italy. After unification the Pope lost his land to the government and his temporal power. Pope Pius IX was left with a tiny amount of land around the Vatican, which made him angry. He refused to accept the laws of Guarantees. He then instructed true Catholics to have nothing to do with the new regime, which had made him the ‘prisoner of the Vatican’. This was a problem for the government because the majority of the population were Catholic and were also poor. This meant that a majority of people would listen to the Pope and not take part in the government’s legislation and they lost a lot of support from the population. The Pope also had a lot of influence over Catholics in other countries such as France. This meant that the Italian government had a possible chance of external conflict and with a weak army and navy they would find it hard to defend themselves from possible attacks.
The last problem facing Italy was that of new enemies. These were the Socialists and the Nationalists. The Socialists believed in equality and sharing wealth. The government was Liberal and they didn’t like the idea of sharing wealth. The Socialist party established trade unions as the country started to Industrialised. This meant that the Socialist party gained a lot of support from the middle class and working class. Nationalists were right wing and they wanted the country to be properly united and also wanted a strong military. Both parties disliked the Liberals and posed a threat to the government with their increasing popularity of the population.
All of these factors added to the newly united Italy’s problems. Together they made it difficult for the government to keep the country happy and united.
