Italy before being a European Union nation

What was Italy like before joining the EU and before being one of the current seventeen nations that trade the Euro?

Italia, with the magnificence of its eternal city of Roma, offers some of the most interesting history on the planet.

A common question about the ancient history of Italy is whether or the history of Italy is the history of Rome. Italy as we know it today is a peninsula with the Alps forming the north and northwest boundary, the Adriatic sea being the east border, the Mediterranean on the south, and Mare Tyrrhenum or the Tyrrhenian sea forming the western border. The Alps form a natural barrier which seperates Italy from the rest of Europe. From Mont Blanc to the sea the mountains which peak in places at 15 thousand feet above sea level formed a natural defense for the ancient cultures of this peninsula. The Appenines (maritime Alps ) are another mountain range which adds to the Italian landscape. On the Mediterranean side the Islands of Sicily, Corsica, and Sardinia also play a major role in the historical development of the Eternal City of Rome and of Italy. Fresh water rivers such as the Po and the Athesis are fed by tributary streams like the Duria, and the Trebia. Italian fresh water lakes mark the landscape along these waterways.

From the time of the ice age to the Holocene period (c. 10 BC ) there were frequent periods where glaciers either formed or retreated from the Alps and Apennines. Hunter gathering cave dwellers shifted with these climatic changes. There is half a million years of prehistory in the Italian peninsula. Sometime between 10 thousand years  ago and six thousand years ago the early Italians became agricultural city dwellers, capable of raising animals, weaving textiles, and building clay structures and wooden sea fairing vessels. Cultures such as the Veneto, the Campignian, the Gargano, and others advance into the copper age and the bronze age.

By 1000 BC the are into the iron age as are the neighbouring Greeks and Phoenician and others. About this time the Etruscan civilization is developing and occupying lands. The Veneti culture is older. While Venitian is a romantic language it is not the original language of the Veniti culture. This Veniti cultural language looks more like a precursor to Latin and as similarities to some Celtic and Germanic languages ( wikipedia ). The Adriatic Veneti go on to battle the Celts and the Greeks and later ally with the Romans in the Second Punic War. The origin of the Veneti culture is likely the Eneti people mentioned by Homer in the Iliad. Other ancients who mention assimilations of the Enotoi and Veneti include Titus Livius and Pliny the Elder.

The Etruscans are more mystical in nature. The people of Etruria are the Tyrrhenians and they were an advanced culture which predate the Romans. Once Rome was established the Etruscans seem to have conquered the Eternal city for a time. What art and architecture is left of these mysterious people seems to show some Greek influence. In the end the Etruscans, like the Veneti, were assimilated in the Roman empire.

Since history is open to interpretation then here is our take on the Etruscans. It is pure speculation however. Herodotus mentions that the Etruscans are a revolutionary group who took stem from Anatolia and who invaded Etruria sometime between 1000 and 800 BC. Another legend goes that the god Mars, through the magic of poiesis, created Remus and Romulus. These two brothers were revolutionaries who went on to build the foundation of a new culture. Remus and Romulus needed a city to promote their sovereignty and they argued about the name of this city. In the heat of the argument Romulus kills Remus and names his eternal city Roma.

Could Remus and Romulus have been Etruscans or separatists from a Greek influenced people from Anatolia who were looking to build a new breed of people ? It's all just speculation..............and it's all just politics.....

The Etruscans were chased from Rome in 509 BC states the story of the expulsion of Tarquinius Superbus. And thus began in earnest the process of unifying Italy. ( see Etruscans )

Adalaide of Italy - image courtesy Wikimedia

However this is but the first attempt at unifying the Italian peninsula and not the political and military events of the 1800's which led to the Italian Risorgimento or Italian Unification and Kingdom of Italy founded in 1861.

Here's a quick tour of what happens in the Italian peninsula from 800 BC to 1800 AD.

• 753 BC Rome is founded
• 616 BC Tarquinius is crowned
• 534 BC Tarquinius II rises to power
• 509 BC Rome becomes a Republic and the main player in Latium
• 400 BC Gauls plunder Rome
• 334 BC ++ Rome conquers and colonized through the Samnitic wars
• 280 BC Roman coins are circulating
• 264 BC Carthago wars begin
• 100 BC Ally wars and civil wars lead to the dictatorship of Sulla and the rebellions of Spartacus
• 49 BC Caesar becomes new dictator but is killed in 44 BC which leads to the election of Augustus ( Octovianus ) to the rank of Emperor of Rome.
• Rome is rocked by the Eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD
• 97 AD human sacrifice is outlawed throughout Roman Empire
• Christian persecution is widespread until Constantine becomes Emperor in c. 324 AD - capital is moved to Constantinople 330 AD  in Anatolia near Byzantium
• The Roman Empire begins a great division where east is centred around Constantinople and west is ruled by a western emperor and vandals plunder Rome.
• 402 AD Imperial court is moved to Ravenna
• 476 AD Fall of the Western Roman Empire and Romulus Augustus is last Western Emperor.
• c. 500 AD Rome looks to Frankish kingdom and British legion for protection and Theodoric the Great king of the Ostrogoths becomes king of  Italy
• Rise of Papal power in Italy begins with the monk Gregory who established six monasteries in Sicily. Gregory is born in c. 540 AD and does is missionary work on the island of Britain
• 540 AD Greco-Roman Byzantium reconquers Italy in Gothic Wars
• 551 AD Lombard King Aistulf captures court city of Ravenna
• 568 to 774 AD Lombard Kings rule Italy - lombards = longobards or men with long beards - start out as Aryan or a mix of community oriented belief but end up accepting Catholicism
• 590 AD Gregory the Monk becomes Gregory I, the Great pope and lord of the city of the Eternal City of Rome
• 774 AD Charlemagne the Frank monarch conquers the northern Italy Lombards and is crowned Emperor of Rome in 800 AD by Pope Leo III at St Peters Basilica
• Under Charlemagne and his successors Italy is part of the Frankish empire.
• c. 850 AD northern Italy is again an independent kingdom
• 950 AD Adelaide, daughter of Rudolf II of Burgundy, consort wife of Otto the Great Holy Roman Emperor, inherits Italy which becomes linked to the German estates and remains this way until the end of the middle ages during which time Holy Roman Emperors rule out of Germany
• Lombard leagues continue to exist and Lombard duchies grow wealthy in the north where cities are left to self styled governments ( vassals to the German based Emperors ).  They will eventually move their estates out of feudalism and make them Republics
• The Hohenstaufen German ruling Roman Emperors gain the throne of Italy in the late 1200's which is a crown of the Normans and includes Naples and the island of Sicily and which is associated to the popes who are Catholic oriented
• Middle ages is a period of Holy Crusades and the Catholic popes have a certain amount of power in dictating who is considered the Holy Roman Emperor - an ongoing battle between popes from the south and emperors from the north - a battle between Guelphs and Ghibellines - feudal Italy
• 1389 AD Cosimo the Medici, a wealthy Florentinian leads the Renaissance through institutions like the Platonic Academy which is a revival of the philosophical foundation of the Classical Greek Plato. 



The Italian Totalitarian
Lorenzo de Medici

• 1449 AD Lorenzo de Medici, son of Cosimo, openly rules as a totalitarian ruler. Pope Leo X is counted amongs his many children.
• 1453 AD conquest of Constantinople can be a marker for end of middle ages and beginning of Renaissance
• Renaissance in Italy begins in Tuscany in the city-states of Florence (Republic), Venice(Republic), Milan (Duchy), Naples (kingdom), and Romagna ( Papal State ). 
• During the Renaissance common bankers and capitalists not of the noble class begin to redistribute wealth through commerce via the merchant class (high nobles). 
• Renaissance meant returning to a classical learning style but it is a period when many human rights are abolished or downgraded - ie. slavery and human trafficking becomes more prominent, women's right are diminished.....
• Many of these slaves ended up in America via the merchant ships which followed the flags of the earliest European explorers.
• 1796 AD Napoleon Bonaparte sieges the Papal States and established French Roman Republics but papal sovereignty was soon restored - papal secular order was again the norm this highly conservative orthodoxy was not well received after the liberal french methods had been introduced and revolters (Italian Nationalists) brought on the end of the Papal States via a war with Austria ( closer to the House of Savoy and the Kingdom of Sardinia which was under the rule of Ottoman Sultans) and revolts against the northern central duchies, kingdoms, and papal states - the idea was for the creation of a single state for all Italian speaking people
• The duke of Savoy ( Savoie ) in 1720 becomes the king of Sardinia.
• In 1860 the Kingdom of Sardinia under the leadership of Giuseppe Garibaldi set out to conquer southern Italy and the dual rulers become known as the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies

In 1861 the Unification of Italy (Risorgimento) is nearly complete when old papal cities like Umbria and Marches are annexed to the new sovereignty. Vittorio Emanuele I becomes the first king the new Italian country. The House of Savoy continues to exist and the Piedmont estates become the capital of Piedmont, Turin, Italy and grow very wealthy through commerce like automobile manufacturing ( The Detroit of Italy).

Twentieth Century Italy.

In WW1 Italy allies itself with Britain and France who promise all types of global real estate concessions upon victory. By the end of WW1 Italy is not receiving payment and suffered economically much like Germany when the Deustche Mark hit hyperinflation. Like in Germany where Hitler came to the rescue, Mussolini found means of generating an economy inside Italy.

In 1922 Mussolini is building is reputation by working to expand the pre war Italian conquests. He is looking to Africa and the Ottoman Empire.

In WWII as a socialist military strategist he allies himself and his countrymen to the Nazi Germans when the trio group Italy, Germany, and Austria-Hungary are formed. This may seem strange when one considers that only a few years before the Italian found independence from Austrian rule through the Risorgimento. However, Austria had recently been purged into the German Nazi web. Mussolini was head of government for the Kingdom of Italy and his socialist political intents are said to have paved the way for full out fascism. He was the leader of National Fascist Party. He had joint control of the Italian military with Vittorio Emanuele III, son of the risorgimento newly elected king. Mussolini was intent on reviving the Roman Empire.

In 1940 the Italian Prime Minister Mussolini declares war on France and Britain. In 1943 Mussolini, the wantabee Hitler, loses all political support from the King Emanuele III who had him arrested and imprisoned. However, Hitler's Nazi came and rescued Mussolini and put him back to work towards building the new Roman Empire. They were now going against Italy.

After the war Italians were immigrating out of Italy towards places like Australia and America in order to get away from the horrendous living conditions. Italy is under reconstruction and many people are unemployed. Many Lira's are being made available by the government for infrastructure projects like running water and sewers but it is a slow process.

By 1957 the Kingdom of Italy joins itself to the European Economic Community which makes Italy one of the six founding members of the European Union.

In 1962 the Vatican under Pope John XIII the right to Italian freedom of democratic government as per the conscience of the voting public

In 1999 Italy adopts the Euro as it's currency of trade both inside the nation and on the international markets. It is amongst the first of the seventeen nations of the Eurozone to replace its fiat currency which up to 1999 was the Italian Lira.