At our July meeting we talked about “The formation of modern Italy”, and as the weather was so nice we held our meeting in the garden. The only problem was that as it was so warm it looked as if the two members on the hammock were nodding off.Italy started life off as a city state many years before the birth of Christ. However by the time the Romans invaded Britain in AD43 the Roman Empire was the biggest ever known, stretching from Northern Britain to Africa and from Portugal in the West to Egypt in the East.
This did not last as Rome fell in AD410 and then for over 1500 years it was invaded, partitioned and fought over by many countries .In addition from early 7th C for about 1200 hundred years there was a Papal State covering about one quarter of modern Italy.
In the mid 1800s Giuseppe Garibaldi managed to unite three quarters of Italy under King Victor Emmanuel, but it was not until 1918 with the collapse of the old Austrian Hungarian Empire at the end of WW1 that Italy managed to regain the remaining top part of old Italy from Lake Garda to the current border with Austria.
In 1919 Mussolini founded the Fascist Party.
In 1919 The Italian poet Gabriele D’Annunzio plus 2600 men seized back Trieste for Italy, and regarded it as the spoils of war, since the end of WW1 it had been under the control of the League of Nations.
In 1921 Mussolini declared himself “Il Duce” and the following year marched on Rome, seized it, and declared himself the only person capable of ruling Italy.
Italy entered WW11 in 1940 on the German side, but suffered many military defeats, and in 1943 the Italians deposed and killed Mussolini and changed sides in the war.
In a referendum in 1946 the Kingdom of Italy was abolished and the Italian Republic was born.
Italy is now a modern European State and an active member of the European Economic Community.
The next meeting will be on Monday 20th September, and the topic will be the history behind King Arthur and his Knights.
Michael Page.
