Why was cavour called the brain

Before the revolutions he worked for a newspaper called il Risorgimento , but one has to ask if he believed in the resurgence or renaissance of Italy. No one doubted that he wanted Piedmont to change from being a somewhat primitive state into being a state distinguished by its prosperity and progressiveness. He inaugurated a considerable program of investment in public works, such as railways, roads, and canals; he spent money on the army; he reduced the role of the Catholic Church in the state.

It is not surprising that increasing numbers of people thought that if Italy was to be united, then it could only be united under the leadership of Piedmont. But Cavour did not necessarily believe in this. Mazzini and Garibaldi were both convinced that he was an aristocrat, out of touch with the people, and a Piedmontese who cared little about the rest of Italy. All he wanted, in their view, was Piedmontese aggrandizement, which would lead to an increase in his own importance.

The charge that his was an entirely egocentric vision would seem to be confirmed by his reluctance to trust his subordinates within Piedmont, his tendency to keep an incompetent in an important post because he could not be a rival, his fear of delegating power.

As Mack Smith points out, someone who took upon himself the responsibility of settling the details of the railway timetable could not supervise the whole field of government, and Piedmont suffered as a result. No one has doubted that he was hostile to the Austrians, but some of his contemporaries claimed that even this was only part of his desire for personal power.

It was said that his scale of values had been corrupted. What was the point of a patriotic movement that depended upon foreign armies and upon an alliance with Napoleon III, himself a despot? He had lost sight of more noble objectives, such as the liberties of subject people and the moral education of the nation.

He had no ideal vision of a new Italian nation. Mack Smith suggests that he did not really believe in an Italian national identity. Having accepted this last as a possibility he promptly warned London about the alarming prospect of a new French dynasty establishing itself in the Mediterranean.

He had no acquaintance with the south when he went to Florence in this was the farthest he had ever traveled in that direction and there is no reason to believe that he sought to bring a new life to the impoverished regions there. Sardinia, which was part of the kingdom of Piedmont, was also beset with the evils of backward agriculture, brigandage, malaria, and illiteracy.

But Cavour never visited the island and publicly spoke of the Sardinians as lazy, dirty, and unenterprising. He blamed them for being unwilling to help themselves. He tried to prevent it. When he could not prevent it he tried to weaken it by refusing to allow the volunteers to take effective arms with them. When they had conquered Sicily he tried to prevent them from crossing the straits into the mainland, and he tried to forestall them by organizing a pro-Piedmontese revolution in Naples.

All these policies failed. It appeared to him that he could only prevent Garibaldi from marching on Rome by sending his own army into the Papal States and, in one final harebrained scheme, by trying to divert attention from the popular revolution in the south by fomenting an anti-Austrian revolution in Hungary.

The main criticism that can be made of Cavour is that when Garibaldi had succeeded in creating a radical, popular movement, then this was confiscated by the Piedmontese government. Not only was it confiscated, it was perverted. Cavour never believed in the Risorgimento from below.

If he believed in the Risorgimento at all it was as something that had to be imposed from above, with all the dynastic conservatism and deceitful liberalism that this implied.

The reforms that Garibaldi had envisaged in Sicily were abandoned when the central government took over. The volunteers who had fought successfully for a united Italy were dismissed or disregarded. Two months before Cavour died the kingdom of Italy was proclaimed under Victor Emmanuel II, but Italy was divided geographically, socially, and ideologically. The facts are recounted by Mack Smith with clarity and conviction. But it is as if, at the last moment, he felt apprehensive of being unjust toward his subject, and he does not draw his conclusions in the devastating way that one might have expected.

Instead he says some of the things that can be said in defense of Cavour. He points out that events moved with great speed, that Cavour never had time to study the possibilities of establishing a regional system of government, that he was facing problems that were quite outside his experience.

Presumably he is anxious that having been the symbol of the Risorgimento as a success story, Cavour should not be made the symbol of its failure. Few people in believed that an Italian nation might exist. There were eight states in the peninsula, each with distinct laws and traditions. Until the wars of unification, the Pope ruled a piece of land in central Italy called the Papal States that divided the peninsula in half. The city-states flourished. In the 15th century, Florence was ruled by the Medicis, a family of bankers.

Florence was a republic ruled by an oligarchy but the Medicis managed to control it. The greatest Medicis were Cosimo who ruled from to and Lorenzo the Magnificent who ruled from to Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Press ESC to cancel. Skip to content Home Sociology How did Cavour use realpolitik?

Ben Davis January 9, How did Cavour use realpolitik? What are the political social and economic views of Cavour? What did count Cavour do? What is the meaning of Cavour? Which person do you think deserves the most credit for uniting Italy? From his exile Mazzini applauded the first reforms of Pio Nono. In Garibaldi offered the apostolic nuncio at Rio de Janeiro Bedini, the service of his Italian Legion for the liberation of the peninsula.

News of the outbreak of revolution in Palermo in January , and revolutionary agitation elsewhere in Italy, encouraged Garibaldi to lead some sixty members of his legion home. He offered his services to Charles Albert and the Piedmontese who initiated the first war for the liberation of Italy, but found his effort spurned.

Rebuffed by the Piedmonese, he and his followers crossed into Lombardy where they offered assistance to the provisional government of Milan. Frank J. Coppa Bibliography Cecchini, Ezio. Coppa, Frank J. The Origins of the Italian Wars of Independence. London and New York: Longman, Gariba ldi, Giuseppe. Autobiography , trans. A Werner.