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- Powerpoint presentation
- The classical liberal historian Lord Acton wrote an essay on Cavour and another on the causes of the Franco-Prussian War.
- Dennis Mack Smith’s Cavour and Garibaldi 1860 is one of the most treatments of Italian unification by an English-speaking historian. Beales and Biagini’s The Risorgimento and the Unification of Italy takes a broader chronological perspective.
- A.J.P. Taylor’s Bismarck: The Man and Statesman is a reliable biography with a special focus on the 1860s.
- “Lincoln and Bismarck: Enemies of Liberalism” by Adam Young
- Those interested in the military angle may find Dennis Showalter’s The Wars of German Unification and Arden Bucholz’s Moltke and the German Wars useful.
Italian and German Unification – Quiz
- Identify the major obstacles to Italian unification in 1848.
- Describe the process by which Camillo Benso di Cavour managed to bring most of Italy under the control of Piedmont-Sardinia.
- Explain how the Kingdom of Italy managed to acquire Venice and Rome between 1861 and 1871.
- Identify the circumstances which made it possible for Prussia to attempt a unification of Germany in the 1860s.
- Identify the three wars of German unification.
- Austrian occupation of much of northern Italy is the most important obstacle. Others include the self-interest of existing state governments and the inability of any state to unite Italy on its own.
- He secured an anti-Austria alliance with France, which led to the support of most of the northern Italian states. He also persuaded Giuseppe Garibaldi to cede control of southern Italy after a successful revolution there in the interests of national unity.
- Venice was acquired as a reward for aiding Prussia in the Seven Weeks War; Rome was acquired when French troops withdrew from there during the Franco-Prussian War.
- Russia withdrew from European affairs, isolating Austria.
- War of Schleswig-Holstein, Seven Weeks War, Franco-Prussian War