I know the Kingdom of Italy (and the "Empire") are generally seen as retarded/incompetent, but did they do anything right?Were they always doomed to be dwarfed by France, Germany and Austria, or is there a timeline where they could have held their own?
I'm not just talking about their military (although if there were any Italians who, if listened to, could have reformed it to be better I am curious) but moreso the way the Kingdom functioned.Was the government well put together? Did they run their colonies well, or just as inefficient prestige printers? Seems Italy was this basket of massive prosperity and money and innovation for so long but then by the 19th Century it was just the mexico of Europe.
Also curious if any other dynasties had a "better claim" to be monarchs of Italy than the House of Savoy, since they've always seemed more aligned with Burgundy/France than Italy.Or maybe the Republicans had more legitimacy?
>>18492999>Was the government well put together? Lol>Did they run their colonies well, or just as inefficient prestige printers?Inneficient prestige printers.
>>18493004>LolThat was my assumption. Seems bizarre given all the big political minds that came from Italy in the 19th Century, how did they bungle it so badly?
>>18493000>Also curious if any other dynasties had a "better claim" to be monarchs of ItalySavoy got their legitimacy by supporting the unification, but they were a shitty dynasty. Charles was shy and stupid, Victor Emmanuel was loud and retarded.
>>18493000the one unifying thing about italy is that every monarch in it was from a french or austrian dynasty.
>>18492998There was nothing particularly wrong about the kingdom of Italy, it was just a country with a cultural baggage way too big for its immediate potential.Just the fact that you're comparing a fresh new country in a very resource poor condition to two world spanning empires and two far bigger and resource richer continental powers ought to give you an idea of how silly and unreasonable it actually was to compare Italy to them.>>18493000>Also curious if any other dynasties had a "better claim" to be monarchs of Italy In effect, any reasonable claim to Italy's crown died when Napoleon dissolved the HRE.House Savoy had as good a claim as anyone by right of force.
>tfw no kino timeline where Leopoldo somehow manages to unify italy
>be house of savoy>give savoy away to a different countrynever let them know your next move
>>18492998>but did they do anything right?No resource, lack of centralization, lack of will to integrate and unify the country, the church told its adherents to consciously object to any involvement with the state apparatus, which was a problem because anybody but the small group of Freemasons and Anarchists that pushed the conquest forward were Catholic.Italy more or less stumbled into unification in spite of its paltry and insufficient efforts, really.>>18492999>Was the government well put together? Best you could say was that the House of Savoy were dedicated liberals and Freemasons and didn't strongly object to or oppose Parliamentarianism and capitalism.>>18493024France exchanged them a nation for a natural border. It's a good deal if you're Savoy.
>>18493005Greatness often comes out of chaotic shitholes. I mean shit even the USA or France today are (relatively speaking) a mess compared to boring orderly Switzerland or Ireland and it's the USA and France which dish out a bunch of Nobel laureates, world renown artists, etc...
They did one thing right: making Italians. Pan-Italianism is a project that never should have worked, and yet Italy still exists today and regional dialects are dying out. Only a north-south divide will probably persist into the future. Pan-slavisms could never. Even pan-Germanism failed as Austria is a separate country.
>>18493022>The tension between Leopold II’s liberal reforms and entrenched conservative Florentine-Tuscan elites. He made a significant mistake against Sardinian forces during the Italian unification process as Leopold II, a liberal monarch, attempted to maintain a policy of neutrality. These policies and actions alienated some of his Austrian allies during the Second Italian War of Independence, but he was expelled by a bloodless coup on 27 April 1859.Was he retarded?
>>18492999>massive prosperity and money and innovationJust until 17th century and even then, they didn't invest money in army, infrastructure, or other useful stuff, but only pretty statues and castles.>>18493000>Also curious if any other dynasties had a "better claim" to be monarchs of Italy than the House of SavoyNot really. Sardinia-Piedmont literally was most advanced place on entire peninsula.
>>18492998>dwarfed by Franceeconomically true although they never fought a real war>dwarfed by Germanypretty much every European country was getting dwarfed by Germany during that time period>dwarfed by Austrianever happenedtheir army was not very good, mostly because of lack of proper equipment and military doctrine, but they had a great navy (which also suffered from fuel shortages) and excellent special forces during ww2.
>>18492998Yes. >Were they always doomed to be dwarfed by France, Germany and Austria, or is there a timeline where they could have held their own?Germany and France? Yes. They were never 'dwarfed' by Austria, arguably it was the only 'power' they outclassed. But that's because of geographical and historical reasons. Not because their governance was uniquely terrible.Their failure are also exaggerated.>>18492999>Was the government well put together?For the most part, no. It was actually kind of terrible.>Did they run their colonies well, or just as inefficient prestige printers?During Fascism they were pretty well run. Before that they were pretty similar to German colonies in Africa with minimal presence. >was just the mexico of Europe.By no means; it was, however meagerly, still a power. And for the record, Mexico isn't that bad as far a LatAm comparisons go.>>18493000There was no legitimacy during 19th century Italy. Besides maybe the pope. Just didn't exist.
If Kingdom of Italy was so shit militarily, then how come they defeated Austria-Hungary on both land and sea?
>>18494021because Austria-Hungary was even worse.
>>18494292>>18494021Austria have decent defense actually.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austro-Hungarian_fortifications_on_the_Italian_borderThe problems are peacetime, multiple fronts, and the spy scandal in 1904-1913.
>>18494021Shitalian can't do anything without it allies.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lissa_(1866)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Strait_of_Otranto_(1917)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattaro_mutiny
>>18494660>>18494676Seethe more Ivan. Your people come to Shitaly to clean toilets and break into houses.
>>18494727>IVAN!>rent free Nice try.
>>18494827Rent free what? You came in here seething for no reason, not me. Not my fault you write like a slav.
>>18493000Savoys started in the Middle Ages as One of the various culturally french HRE vassals of the ancient Burgundy corridor. But unlike anyone else around, they managed to avoid getting eaten up by France during the Late Middle Ages, and remained part of the HRE. They moves their capital from the french side of the Alps into Turin in the 16th Exactly to avoid annexation by France.By the late XVIII Century they were the only dynasty in Italy that wasnt either a Bourboun or a Hapsburg cadet branch. Their french cultural background (so Easy alliance with France) and the ancient Imperial/ghibellines loyalties (so easy support from anti-papal nationalists) together with not being a cadet branch of a foreign power helped build support to them across different factions as the only realistic candidate to lead the unification during the mid XIX Century. Even moderate republicans like Garibaldi eventually understood a united Italy under the Savoy House was the only concrete chance of creating a united Italy
>>18494914I not seethe, just called out your stupidity.
>>18492998By prioritizing nation states you are already tacitly supporting some 19th century view where this will all be tied to gdp and the palermo olive harvest market will immediately somehow supposably determine how effectively the government is viewed sometimes in that governments attempt to conquer all of realityBut that’s a fucked up view you can definitely tell just from remembering that when we talk about italy what we talk about is usually the renaissance and the city states of italy and obviously you can tell that just where town states as mode of government occurs is going to be more liberal and more progressive to the places where the regime of the state hegemony of the market place is carried out across geographically platted out surfaces of the earth that are just said to be arbitrarily be there as just an edit issued into the void instead of being connected with the community of an congregation or a aggregation like a town state or something like that
