Conclusion

Abstract

This book has sought to reveal the extent to which the British leaders of the 1860s and their overseas representatives looked upon the unifying of Italy as an opportunity to forge a ‘special relationship’ with the newly formed state. In an age when British naval power dominated the Mediterranean region—and when their principal rival in that region was France—the prospect of a united Italy was a most welcome strategic boon to British strategists. Moreover, the creation of the Kingdom of Italy as a constitutional monarchy, open to free trade and committed to secularisation, presented the possibility that such a country would look towards Great Britain for guidance as well as friendship. Although there is little evidence that Italian leaders sought British advice, and plenty of evidence that they did not appreciate it when it was forced upon them unsolicited, it is clear that British politicians and diplomatic figures took a keen interest in the Italian state’s development during the difficult decade following the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy. It is also well established that British politicians, and on occasion their representatives in Italy, took it upon themselves to seek to influence that country’s direction. While the British cannot claim to have had any military impact upon either the unifying of Italy between 1859 and 1861, or the preservation of the new state during the extremely challenging events of the 1860s, there was surely a considerable degree to which Britain assisted Italy in establishing itself as ‘the least of the Great Powers’. The fact that the British foreign secretary had offered his country’s endorsement to the unification of northern and southern Italy in 1860, before providing official recognition of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861, was significant. From that point onwards, Italy was known in international relations to be the friend of the country which was then not only the world’s wealthiest power but also the dominant naval power in the Mediterranean. The fact that the Italian kingdom was looked upon by the British as one which existed within such an important sphere of British influence can have done it no harm. Neither can the new state be considered to have suffered from the fact that so many people in Britain—from leading politicians to members of the general public—were so enthusiastic about the dramatic events that had come to pass in Italy.

This book has sought to reveal the extent to which the British leaders of the 1860s and their overseas representatives looked upon the unifying of Italy as an opportunity to forge a ‘special relationship’ with the newly formed state. In an age when British naval power dominated the Mediterranean region—and when their principal rival in that region was France—the prospect of a united Italy was a most welcome strategic boon to British strategists. Moreover, the creation of the Kingdom of Italy as a constitutional monarchy, open to free trade and committed to secularisation, presented the possibility that such a country would look towards Great Britain for guidance as well as friendship. Although there is little evidence that Italian leaders sought British advice, and plenty of evidence that they did not appreciate it when it was forced upon them unsolicited, it is clear that British politicians and diplomatic figures took a keen interest in the Italian state’s development during the difficult decade following the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy. It is also well established that British politicians, and on occasion their representatives in Italy, took it upon themselves to seek to influence that country’s direction. While the British cannot claim to have had any military impact upon either the unifying of Italy between 1859 and 1861, or the preservation of the new state during the extremely challenging events of the 1860s, there was surely a considerable degree to which Britain assisted Italy in establishing itself as ‘the least of the Great Powers’.¹ The fact that the British foreign secretary had offered his country’s endorsement to the unification of northern and southern Italy in 1860, before providing official recognition of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861, was significant. From that point onwards, Italy was known in international relations to be the friend of the country which was then not only the world’s wealthiest power but also the dominant naval power in the Mediterranean. The fact that the Italian kingdom was looked upon by the British as one which existed within such an important sphere of British influence can have done it no harm. Neither can the new state be considered to have suffered from the fact that so many people in Britain—from leading politicians to members of the general public—were so enthusiastic about the dramatic events that had come to pass in Italy.

It is probably fair to say that the British intention to watch over Italy and to steer the country in the direction that was considered in London to be the right one, was benign. Nonetheless, Britain’s goodwill towards Italy should not be allowed to obscure the fact that British foreign policy towards that country, throughout the 1860s, came from a position of self-interest. During the Risorgimento, Italy had acquired a reputation for being a revolution hotbed. The Italian Question had threatened quite frequently to spark civil unrest, which it succeeded in doing most famously and with dramatic consequences in 1848. It had also raised the prospect of war between the Great Powers on numerous occasions, and had been the cause of international conflict in 1859. These dangers did not disappear upon the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861; if anything, the emergence of the Roman and Venetian Questions to supersede the Italian Question made the situation even more volatile, on account of the desperate difficulties facing the new state, and the determination of its leaders to see those issues resolved sooner than later. The British government’s position as the effective guarantor of Italian unification, self-imposed through Russell’s famous despatch of 27 October 1860 and the official recognition of Italy’s independence and unification in 1861, made the situation an uncomfortable one for whomever was at the helm of Britain’s foreign relations during the decade that followed. It is for these reasons that this study concludes that the British—and Palmerston, Russell, and Gladstone in particular—can be considered to have made a considerable investment in Italy through their government’s moral and diplomatic support for Italian unification—an investment in a project that none of them wished to see fail. British prestige, the reputations of Britain’s most powerful politicians of the age, as well as the country’s strategic interests in the Mediterranean were all at stake.

The findings of this book are consistent with the theory put forward by Maartje Abbenhuis, who argues that neutrality was a means through which the British—as well as the other Great Powers—could assert themselves in the world, and by which they might seek to contain crises and to control events. As one of the only two Great Powers (the other being Russia) to maintain a constant policy of neutrality in European affairs throughout the period between the end of the Crimean War in 1856 and the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, ‘Britain played a key hand in keeping the multitude of wars that involved Europe and the United States to limited conflicts that did not threaten the international system as a whole’.² The British played an important role in protecting weaker neutrals from threats or belligerent demands by advocating the permanent neutrality of key states. This applies very much to new Kingdom of Italy, which was after 1861 a large and important but fragile power with a formidable range of external and internal enemies. Abbenhuis goes on to suggest that neutrality was a solely British phenomenon, but a European one. It was, throughout the nineteenth century, a keystone of British foreign policy, and one that was put to good use in Italy during the first decade of Italian unity.

Throughout the period covered here, the British diplomatic and consular services performed a valuable role in terms of providing a steady flow of generally reliable information on Italian affairs for the British governments of the 1860s. This enabled successive administrations of differing political consistencies in London to possess a far more immediate, detailed, and realistic insight into the state of affairs in the new Kingdom of Italy than would otherwise have been possible. The proximity between the picture provided by British representatives to Italy, and the contents of modern historical works focusing on the period, testifies to the overall accuracy of their portrayal of the situation. No shocking inaccuracies have been found in the material with which British diplomatic and consular staff furnished the Foreign Office. Furthermore, the contrast between the British government’s realistic picture of the newly united kingdom in Italy after 1861 and the romantic myth of the Risorgimento which the leaders of that country wished to propagate helps to explain the concern felt in Whitehall, and the determination of British leaders to use their influence to steer the new Italy in the direction that they felt to be right. It is also evident that the perceptions and sympathies of individual diplomatic representatives could influence the British government. Sir James Hudson, Henry Elliot, Sir Augustus Paget, and Odo Russell each lent something of their own character and opinions to the information they provided to the Foreign Office. While Hudson might have been more enthusiastic about Italian unification than most, if not all, of the politicians in London, Elliot provided astute and sensitive coverage of Italian affairs; while Paget might have been rather gruff and even contemptuous in his explanations of conditions in Italy, Odo Russell offered his interpretations of the last days of the temporal power of the Papacy with wit and intelligence. In addition, all of these figures played a key role in filtering the vast amount of correspondence they received from Britain’s consular staff located throughout Italy, which proved to be of immense use in furnishing the British government with pictures of Italy and its various difficulties that were perhaps not the version of events with which Italian politicians would have wished to share with London.

The introductory chapter to this book proposed to examine British relations with the new Kingdom of Italy in the light of such personal input by Britain’s overseas representatives. It also suggested that British foreign policy towards Italy could be framed within the concept of the development of a ‘special relationship’, whereby successive governments in Britain kept a keen eye trained on Italian affairs and sought to influence the development and direction of the new state. The second chapter provided a foundation for the study by placing Italy during the 1850s within the wider context of Britain’s foreign relations, accounting for the rise of pro-Italian sympathy among the mid-Victorian generation, and providing a narrative of the role played by British leaders during the unification of most of Italy between 1859 and 1861. From this starting point, the third and fourth chapters both revealed the extent to which the Liberal administration led by Palmerston and Russell watched with fascination and concern as the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy was followed by an extremely hard period of domestic unrest, as well as a series of ill-fated efforts to resolve the Roman and Venetian Questions. The fifth chapter has shown how, while the Conservative party had shown little sympathy for Italian nationalism and little satisfaction at the emergence of a united kingdom in Italy, once in power, Derby and Stanley inherited their predecessors’ sense of concern over the stability and integrity of the new state. The sixth chapter described the story of Britain’s involvement in Italian affairs during the country’s troubled first decade to a close, by exposing how the Liberal government, led by Gladstone as prime minister, and by Clarendon and Granville as his foreign secretaries, was prepared to resort to taking a delicate and discreet measure to smooth the passage for the culmination of the Risorgimento with the Italian acquisition of Rome.

Although the scope of this book does not extend beyond 1870, it is worthwhile to finish with some observations on how the relationship created between Britain and Italy during the 1860s might be considered to have left a lasting legacy. Certainly, the generation of Count Cavour had held Britain in high esteem. While many of the institutions and conventions adopted by the new Italian state after 1861 were more reminiscent of the French system than the British, and while some Italian foreign ministers had sometimes been infuriated by the comments that they received from British diplomats, Italy nonetheless looked upon Britain in a very positive light. The occasional forceful demand or withering remark notwithstanding, in general, the Italian political class knew that in a Europe that was largely hostile to the existence of their state, the British were firm friends; it is possible, also, that in the most dangerous moments through which they passed during the 1860s, the Italians felt that the British would be their protectors and would come to their aid if it ever looked likely that their kingdom would collapse, or—especially—if it should it be threatened with destruction by hostile powers. There is evidence of this sentiment dating from times when the Roman and Venetian Questions were up for discussion, and seemed ripe to precipitate an international crisis; towards the end of the decade, the Florentine newspaper La Nazione called for the British to abandon their aloofness.³ During the advent of the Franco-Prussian War, Italian parliamentarians who were concerned that Vittorio Emanuele II might drag Italy into the conflict on the side of Napoléon III appealed to the British to enter into a pact of neutrality with Italy, pledging non-intervention. The British refusal to enter into any formal agreement with Italy or any other power during the latter half of the nineteenth century could well have been a factor that combined with Italian rivalry with France and the Italians’ ongoing sense of insecurity to lead them to join the Triple Alliance alongside the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires in 1883. They did, however, join Spain and the Austro-Hungarians in signing the Mediterranean Agreements with Britain in 1887, by which each power undertook to maintain the status quo in the Mediterranean region, and to resist any attempt by any power to alter it⁴; this deal was a watered-down version of an earlier Italian proposal to strike an alliance to safeguard their respective interests in North Africa.⁵ And, when the First World War broke out in Europe in 1914, the Italians abstained from intervention on the side of their German and Austrian allies, before opting to fight alongside the British, French, and Russians in 1915; in his appropriately titled thesis ‘The Traditional Friendship’, Richard Bosworth suggests that in addition to their greater ability to defend the Alps than the Mediterranean, this decision was the result of their national interests lying more with Britain than with any other power.⁶ Indeed, the ‘special relationship’ which might be considered to have been forged between Britain and Italy during the 1860s did not begin to falter until the Fascist era, when British and French opposition to Mussolini’s ambitions in Abyssinia persuaded him that Italian aims would best be served through alliance with Nazi Germany, and the Italian dictator’s fateful decision to declare war on Britain and France in 1940. Therefore, by establishing a close friendship which endured for seven decades, and which has been very successfully rebuilt since the Second World War, the investment made by British leaders in the new Kingdom of Italy that emerged from the Risorgimento in 1861 can be considered to have been a fruitful one.