Origins

The Italian ethnic group in Canada, numbering over 1 million people, originates from a country that is both ancient and relatively new. Although the political unification of Italy in 1861 occurred in the same decade as Canadian Confederation, the country had for almost two millennia experienced important commonalities of culture, religion, and language. It was as part of the Roman world that a shared civilization took root which, in many respects, survived the political fragmentation that occurred after the fall of the empire in the fifth century.

Around 500 B.C.E. Rome, then a republican city state, began its expansion, first establishing supremacy over the surrounding Latin states. By the end of the third century B.C.E. it had conquered the Italian peninsula and the adjacent islands. Various Italian peoples, such as the Etruscans and Umbri in the central region, the Veneti and Celts in the north, and the Lucani and Greeks in the south, were brought under the aegis of Rome and eventually extended full citizenship. During the imperial period, which reached its height around 100 C.E., Italy was a province in an empire that extended from the Caspian Sea to the Atlantic and from North Africa to Britain.

The barbarian invasion of the empire and Italy itself in the fifth century ushered in a long period of political fragmentation throughout the peninsula that was to last until modern times. Nevertheless, a cultural legacy survived that provided Italy with a fundamental continuity and coherence throughout the centuries. The Romans had successfully introduced Latin throughout Italy by the time of Christ’s birth, thus providing a common linguistic substratum to the various Italian dialects that were later to emerge. Classical Latin itself was to remain the language of the educated until the fourteenth century, when the literary genius of Florence ensured the acceptance of a standard Italian that became increasingly diffuse and was later adopted as Italy’s national language. Though dialects were commonly spoken until recently, these were often similar enough that the neighbouring regional vernacular could be understood.

Another important source of cohesion was religion. The Romans had propagated their polytheistic state religion throughout Italy. However, on the eve of the empire’s demise, Emperor Constantine in the early fourth century reversed the government policy of hostility towards Christianity and accorded it full legal recognition; indeed, it was declared the official religion of the empire. Hence, although Italians were to be politically fragmented through the Middle Ages and early modern period, they were united by Roman Catholicism. After the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, their expressive, Mediterranean form of Catholicism distinguished them even more from peoples north of the Alps.

Other aspects of the Roman past that survived Germanic invasions to influence Italian development were its urban and republican legacy, which inspired the medieval city states and commune culture of even the smallest towns, and the store of classical learning, which contributed to Italian humanism and underlay the dynamism of the Renaissance. Among the many social and economic inheritances were the structure of the traditional Italian family with its premium on paternal authority, pre-feudal land-tenure arrangements that long affected the peasantry, and building skills that would later make Italians renowned worldwide for their construction work in stone, cement, and marble.

Like its ancient legacy, Italy’s geographic cohesion helped to mitigate the impact of its political break-up after the fifth century. The Italian peninsula juts out into the Mediterranean Sea, and the Alps provide a natural boundary from northern Europe. In the north the fertile Po River valley traverses the land from west to east, while throughout the length of the peninsula the Apennines dominate. The nearby islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica share a common geography and history with the Italian peninsula. The moderate Mediterranean climate gave rise to a variety of produce, chiefly wheat, olives, grapes, citrus fruits, and, after the sixth century, mulberry leaves for silkworm production. The mountainous terrain promoted widespread sheep raising. It was these products, characteristic of the Mediterranean area, that traditionally underlay much of the Italian economy.

The fall of Rome in 476 made Italy a much contested prize among rival powers. During the early Middle Ages it was dominated by a series of Germanic rulers. The first of these, in the sixth century, were the Ostrogoths, whose rule was ended by the Byzantine invasion. The Lombards soon followed, settling permanently in north-central Italy and establishing dominance over most of the peninsula until the eighth century. They were succeeded by the Franks, whose hegemony resulted in most of Italy being absorbed into the Holy Roman Empire between the tenth and thirteenth centuries. Essentially this was a loose federation of Germany and Italy based on feudalism and Christianity, with the German emperor as a titular head, but whose position was legitimized by papal investiture.

The far south and the northeast coast of Italy, however, departed from these developments: these areas remained part of the Byzantine Empire until the eleventh century. Arab infiltration of the south was cut short by the Norman conquest, which lasted almost until 1200. Next, the German Swabians ruled the peninsula, themselves to be replaced by the French Angevins, who held power from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. Notwithstanding the succession of invasions, foreign domination over Italy was far from effective. Intrigue among the warring powers, the intervention of the papacy, and the resistance of Italians themselves made centralized rule difficult, if not impossible. Moreover, the invaders became assimilated into Italian life. Hence, the Middle Ages witnessed the evolution of influential city states and commune culture, especially north of Rome.

Being strategically located in the Mediterranean basin, Italy profited from trade with the East and became the economic heartland of Europe. The ports of Venice and Genoa matured into powerful city republics with extensive commercial empires, and by the late fourteenth century the former clearly dominated the Mediterranean. Located between the two maritime states, Milan became the leading city of the Lombard League and a major manufacturing centre. In central Italy the banking city of Florence emerged as the cultural centre of the Renaissance, the base for great figures ranging from Dante to Michelangelo and Machiavelli. The revival of learning and the arts during the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries involved the whole of Italy, which emerged with a common literary language and cultural tradition.

Ironically, the fulfilment of the Renaissance in the 1500s also witnessed, except in Venice, the decline of Italian self-determination. Italy became enmeshed in a series of wars involving France, Spain, and the new power of Austria. The net result was the consolidation of Spanish rule over the peninsula. By the mid-eighteenth century, however, most of northern and central Italy had been brought under Austrian rule. This phase of dynastic rivalry was swept aside by the French Revolution of 1789, which had a profound effect on the evolution of modern Italy. Napoleon’s conquest of Italy created a series of regional republics throughout the peninsula, which, although short-lived, planted liberal ideals that were later to bear fruit.

The defeat of Napoleon by a coalition of major powers in 1815 restored the old regimes. Austria retook Lombardy and added once-proud Venice to its empire. In the south the Spanish Bourbons regained their kingdom and the papacy its states. In between lay the duchies of Tuscany, Modena, and Parma. In the northwest, however, a new power was appearing. Piedmont, which since the sixteenth century had become increasingly Italian and had managed to preserve its independence through an efficient military, re-emerged strengthened and poised to lead Italy’s unification. The Enlightenment ideals of rationality, liberty, and democracy that had found their political expression in the 1789 revolution now drove the movement of renewal, or Risorgimento, for Italian unification and independence. This movement took two basic forms: a revolutionary, republican wing with roots in the south in Naples, under the leadership of Giuseppe Mazzini (the carbonari and Young Italy), and a moderate wing that strove for union under a constitutional monarchy, led by Camillo di Cavour, that at the time was based in Piedmont.

Patriotic uprisings took place throughout the first half of the century, culminating in revolutions from Sicily to Milan in 1848. Although they were unsuccessful, the revolts stimulated Piedmont to wage war against Austria, which resulted in the former’s annexation of Lombardy in 1859 and of north-central Italy a year later. Also in 1860, Giuseppe Garibaldi and his republican volunteers liberated the southern Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, which voted by plebiscite for union. In 1861 the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed, to which Venice was finally added in 1866 and Rome four years later. The young nation inherited numerous problems stemming from centuries of foreign dominance, disunity, and misrule. It attempted, with mixed results, to forge an efficient state, build modern industry, and establish overseas colonies. The growth of the working class and uneven economic development between north and south soon led to major new problems of class conflict, sectional friction, and emigration.

World War I turned Italy’s attention away from internal problems. After being promised extensive territory at the expense of Austria by the Triple Alliance, it joined the fray in 1915 on the side of Britain, France, and Russia. At the peace negotiations of 1919, Italy was awarded Trentino and South Tyrol in the north and Istria in the east, but was denied, at the insistence of the American president, promised territory in Dalmatia along the eastern Adriatic (present day Croatia). After the heavy losses sustained during the war, this thwarting of Italian claims caused widespread resentment, which became a major factor behind the rise of fascism under Benito Mussolini. Extensive unrest and fear of socialism were also influences. As a nationalist, anti-Communist movement, fascism appealed to conservative elements. It gained power in 1922 after a march on Rome by armed fascist squads.

Although Mussolini soon assumed dictatorial powers, he won general Western support for his opposition to bolshevik revolution and his handling of the Great Depression. Major rifts with Britain and France occurred, however, after the fascist invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. Fascist Italy entered World War II in 1940 on the side of Nazi Germany, an alliance that soon proved disastrous. Mussolini was overthrown three years later, and Rome signed an armistice with the Allies. The war resulted in the loss of Istria to Yugoslavia and of Italy’s African colonies. By the end of the conflict in 1945, the country was economically and politically devastated, and it now embarked on a new phase in its development. It became a republic in 1946 and adopted a new constitution, which called for a social democracy and the decentralization of government. Twenty regions were formed, out of which five border areas were given extra powers, especially in dealing with the concerns of ethno-linguistic minorities. In 1949 Italy joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, made up of Western nations, including Canada, for mutual defence against the emergent Communist bloc.

A year later Rome embarked on an ambitious program of post-war reconstruction that called for an assault on large-scale unemployment and the tackling of poverty in the south through land reform and development funds. Italy was a founding member of the European Economic Market in 1957, and three years later it was well into its “economic miracle.” By 1987 its economy had grown to one of the largest in the world, and, together with Canada, it entered the Group of Seven leading industrial nations.

Politically, Italy’s constitution gave it a parliamentary system based on proportional representation. While this approach to democracy has seemingly produced a “revolving door” of governments, in essence they have amounted to what in the Canadian parliamentary tradition would be cabinet shuffles. In fact, postwar Italian politics has been surprisingly stable since Christian Democratic leaders have consistently dominated governments within largely centre-left coalitions. Political reforms of 1993, inspired by the end of the Cold War, moved Italy in significantly new directions, however. An electoral system closer to the Canadian one was introduced and other changes, including a new constitution, are under way.