MAP 22.2 Unification of Italy, 1859–1870
The many states of the Italian peninsula had different languages, ways of life, and economic interests. The northern kingdom of Sardinia, which included the commercially advanced state of Piedmont, had much to gain from a unified market and a more extensive pool of labor. Although the armies of King Victor Emmanuel II and Giuseppe Garibaldi brought the Italian states together as a single country, it would take decades to construct a culturally, socially, and economically unified nation.