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Unification to the First World War in Italy

The rapid unification process forced the young Italian kingdom to deal immediately with serious difficulties at both an international level, created by those who could not accept the birth of a unified State in Italy, as well as internally, due to economic and social inequalities and traditional disparities among the various parts of the Peninsula.

The two large parliamentary blocs - the Right, consisting of moderate liberals and conservatives, and the Left, which included progressive and democratic liberals - although divided over the actions of government, shared a single aspiration: achievement of national unity with Rome, still under the Pope's rule, and the Veneto region, controlled by Austria.
This latter would become part of the Kingdom of Italy after the Third War of Independence, fought in 1866 against the Habsburg Empire, alongside Bismarck's Prussia.

Four years later, during the Franco-Prussian war, Rome would also join the Italian State. The breach of Porta Pia (20 September 1870), which allowed Italian troops into the Eternal City, marked the end of the Church's ancient strangle hold.
Despite the guarantees immediately provided by the Italian state to the Pope for the free exercise of his functions as leader of the Catholic Church, set forth in the law of 1871, Pius IX refused to recognise the new political and territorial arrangement.
Thus, the "question of Rome " remained unresolved, preventing both a normal relationship between the Holy See and the Italian government, as well as the Catholic world's active participation in the political life of the country.

With the change of the parliamentary majority and the Left's entry into government in 1876, pressure mounted regarding the Italian territories still under Habsburg rule, symbolised by the cities of Trent and Trieste.
At the same time, as a result of internal migration, which in subsequent decades emptied entire regions of Italy, and the unresolved southern Italy issue, a colonial policy went into effect aimed at expansion into the Horn of Africa (Eritrea and Somalia).
Having clearly established the international position of the country in 1882, via the stipulation of a Triple Alliance with Bismarck's Germany and Austria-Hungary, Italy moved into a period of strong economic growth and rapid social change.

The outbreak of the First World War between the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey) and the Allied forces (France, Britain and Russia) in 1914, which came right after the war fought by Italy against the Ottoman Empire for Libya, was an opportunity to complete the national unification process.
Having verified the impossibility of peacefully reuniting the unredeemed lands via negotiation with Austria-Hungary, Italy was forced to denounce the Triple Alliance and, in 1915, join the Allies against the Central Powers.

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