Main > Survival Guide > Italy
Italy, is a long peninsula shaped like a boot bounded on the west by the Tyrrhenian Sea and on the east by the Adriatic. Approximately 966 of Italy's 1140 miles of length are in the long peninsula that projects into the Mediterranean from the fertile basin of the Po River. The Apennine Mountains, branching off from the Alps between Nice and Genoa, form the peninsula's backbone, and rise to a maximum height of 2915 meters at the Gran Sasso d'Italia (Corno). The Alps form Italy's northern boundary. Several islands form part of Italy. Sicily lies off the toe of the boot, across the Strait of Messina, with a steep and rockbound northern coast and gentler slopes to the sea in the west and south. Mount Etna, an active volcano, rises to 3275 meters, and most of Sicily is more than 150 meters in elevation. 100 km southwest of Sicily lies Pantelleria, and south of that are Lampedusa and Linosa. Sardinia, which is just south of Corsica and about 200 km west of the mainland, is mountainous and stony.
At the beginning of the first millennium BC the following native tribes could be distinguished on Italian territory: the 'Terramare' in the Po Plains; the 'Ligures', on the coast that bears their name, in the northern Apennine valleys and the western Po Valley; the 'Sicani', in the interior of Sicily; the 'Itali', in present-day Calabria; the 'Villanovans', probably from Eastern Europe and settled throughout Central Italy; the 'Umbrians' to the east of the upper basin of the Tiber; the 'Veneti', ' originally came from Illyria as did the 'Messapii' and 'Iapyges', who settled in present-day Puglia (Apulia). The migrations of Indo-European peoples into Italy probably began about 2000 B.C.E. and continued down to 1000 B.C.E. From about the 9th century B.C.E. until it was overthrown by the Romans in the 3rd century B.C.E., the Etruscan civilization dominated the area. By 264 B.C.E. all Italy south of Cisalpine Gaul was under the leadership of Rome. For the next seven centuries, until the barbarian invasions destroyed the western Roman Empire in the 4th and 5th centuries C.E., the history of Italy was largely the history of Rome. From C.E. 800 on, the Holy Roman Emperors, Roman Catholic popes, Normans, and Saracens all vied for control over various segments of the Italian peninsula. Numerous city-states, such as Venice and Genoa, whose political and commercial rivalries were intense, and many small principalities flourished in the late Middle Ages. Although Italy remained politically fragmented for centuries, it became the cultural center of the Western world from the 13th to the 16th century. In 1713, after the War of the Spanish Succession, Milan, Naples, and Sardinia were handed over to the Hapsburgs of Austria, which lost some of its Italian territories in 1735. After 1800, Italy was unified by Napoléon, who crowned himself king of Italy in 1805; but with the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Austria once again became the dominant power in a disunited Italy. Austrian armies crushed Italian uprisings in 1820-21 and 1831. In the 1830s Giuseppe Mazzini, brilliant liberal nationalist, organized the Risorgimento (Resurrection), which laid the foundation for Italian unity. Disappointed Italian patriots looked to the House of Savoy for leadership. Count Camille di Cavour (1810-61), premier of Sardinia in 1852 and the architect of a united Italy, joined England and France in the Crimean War (1853-56), and in 1859, helped France in a war against Austria, thereby obtaining Lombardy. By plebiscite in 1860, Modena, Parma, Tuscany, and the Romagna voted to join Sardinia. In 1860, Giuseppe Garibaldi conquered Sicily and Naples and turned them over to Sardinia. Victor Emmanuel II, king of Sardinia, was proclaimed King of Italy in 1861. The annexation of Venetia in 1866 and of papal Rome in 1870 marked the complete unification of peninsular Italy into one nation under a constitutional monarchy. Italy declared its neutrality upon the outbreak of World War I on the ground that Germany had embarked upon an offensive war. In 1915, Italy entered the war on the side of the Allies but obtained less territory than it expected in the postwar settlement. Benito Mussolini, a former socialist, organized discontented Italians in 1919 into the Fascist Party to rescue Italy from Bolshevism. He led his Black Shirts in a march on Rome and, on Oct. 28, 1922, became premier. He transformed Italy into a dictatorship, embarking on an expansionist foreign policy with the invasion and annexation of Ethiopia in 1935 and allying himself with Adolf Hitler in the Rome-Berlin Axis in 1936. When the Allies invaded Italy in 1943, Mussolini's dictatorship collapsed; he was executed by Partisans on April 28, 1945, at Dongo on Lake Como. Following the armistice with the Allies (Sept. 3, 1943), Italy joined the war against Germany. A June 1946 plebiscite rejected monarchy and a republic was proclaimed. The peace treaty of Sept. 15, 1947, required Italian renunciation of all claims in Ethiopia and Greece and the cession of the Dodecanese to Greece and of five small Alpine areas to France. The Trieste area west of the new Yugoslav territory was made a free territory (until 1954, when the city and a 90-square-mile zone were transferred to Italy and the rest to Yugoslavia). Getting back to Fascism, let's talk of a few key concepts that are basic to it. First and most important is the glorification of the state and the total subordination of the individual to it. The state is defined as an organic whole into which individuals must be absorbed for their own and the state's benefit. This "total state" is absolute in its methods and unlimited by law in its control and direction of its citizens. A second ruling element of Fascism is its elitism. Salvation from rule by the mob and the destruction of the existing social order can be effected only by an authoritarian leader who embodies the highest ideals of the nation. This concept of the leader as hero or superman, borrowed in part from the romanticism of Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Carlyle, and Richard Wagner, is closely linked with Fascism's rejection of reason and intelligence and its emphasis on vision, creativeness, and "the will." Italy became an integral member of NATO and the European Economic Community (later the EU) as it successfully rebuilt its postwar economy. A prolonged outbreak of terrorist activities by the left-wing Red Brigades threatened domestic stability in the 1970s, but by the early 1980s the terrorist groups had been suppressed. Scandal brought the long reign of the Christian Democrats to an end when Italy's 40th premier since World War II, Arnaldo Forlani, was forced to resign in the wake of disclosure that many high-ranking Christian Democrats and civil servants belonged to a secret Masonic lodge known as 'P-2.' During 1993, the nation was riveted by a political scandal of a seemingly ever-growing size involving the Mafia and many government leaders. In a referendum, voters approved changing the proportional system of representation in the Senate for one utilizing majority voting. This series of scandals led to the collapse of the post-World War II party system and new parties filled the political vacuum. In 1996, Italians elected a government dominated by a center-left coalition for the first time since the proclamation of the Italian Republic. In 1997, Italian forces assumed leadership of a military mission to protect international aid reaching strife-torn Albania. The Communists, Italy's single largest party, refused to support the operation but refrained from withdrawing support from the government.
Italy adopted it current flag of green, white and red, June 19, 1946. There are currently 20 Provinces or Regions of Italy: Valle d'Aosta, Trentino Alto Adige, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Sardegna, Sicilia, Piemonte, Lombardia, Veneto, Liguria, Emilia Romagna, Toscana, Umbria, Marche, Lazio, Abruzzo, Molise, Campania, Puglia, Basilicata and Calabria.
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