Questions of synthesis

Answers to the working assignments/questions:

1. The princely states suppressed the national movement, because they felt they felt that this movement may pose threat to their territorial status. The monarchs particularly feared the loss of their sovereignty. Hence, the establishment of a unified German Empire in 1871 led to the loss of power of the rulers of smaller dominions. Moreover, on the part of the revolutionaries, the demands for national unity were always accompanied by demands for more civil rights, political participation and constitutionalism.
2. The territories of Veneto and Lombardy belonged to the Hapsburg Empire. The duchies of Parma, Modena and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany were Hapsburg secundogenitures. The Kingdom of Sicily was governed by the Spanish Bourbons. The rest of the area consisted of the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont and the Papal State.

Activities:

German Empire:

The unification took place in basically two steps: the foundation of the North German Confederation which became a federal state in the following year by means of a constitution, after the Austro-Prussian War of Prussia against the Hapsburg Empire in 1866 which ended the German dualism, as well as the foundation of the German Empire after the war against France in 1870/71 which led to a territorial expansion and the extension of the Confederation.

Italy:

The Italian state was enforced as a constitutional monarchy, the Kingdom of Italy, after several revolutionary upheavals and the Italian Wars of Independence in 1861. The change was accomplished in 1870 with the military seizure of the Papal State and its capital, Rome, by Italian troops. Viktor Emmanuel II, the king of Sardinia-Piedmont, became Italy’s first king.