History
The earliest known human artifacts in Italy date from about 20,000 BC. Waves of migratory peoples roamed the peninsula until about 700 to 800 BC, when Phoenicians and Greeks established colonies in southern Italy and Sicily. These colonies represented a significant artistic and cultural advance over the native cultures. A hundred years later, in the Tuscany area, the Etruscans began to evolve a similarly advanced culture, complete with trade, agriculture, and art. Shortly thereafter, the inhabitants of Rome developed a civilization based on military discipline and a strict class system.Among these independent early city-states fierce rivalries developed. The Romans went on to conquer most of Italy, becoming the uncontested power in the region after they subdued the Sicilian Greeks and Carthage in the Punic Wars (264–146 BC).
The more powerful and richer Rome became, the more acute its social and economic inequities grew. By the 1st century BC, the city's plebeians (commoners) fought against the powerful, wealthy patricians for a redistribution of land and the rights of Roman citizenship. At the height of these social upheavals, the Roman army was forced to enter Rome to restore order. Three popular leaders, Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus, were chosen in 60 BC to lead a new government, called the Triumvirate. Both fearful and jealous of his growing power, on the Ides of March, 44 BC, Brutus knifed Caesar on the steps of the Senate. Fifteen years of bitter war between rival successors to Caesar's mantle followed. Finally, in 27 BC, Caesar's nephew Octavian gained control and declared himself Augustus, emperor of Rome and its territories.
During Augustus's reign, Roman law, administration, and civilization were carried to far outposts throughout the empire. Augustus undertook a massive rebuilding of the city's public edifices. After Augustus, the wealth and influence of Rome continued to expand, even as the quality of Augustus's heirs declined. His dynasty ended in AD 68, with the suicide of Nero. Other dynasties followed: the Flavians (AD 69–117) and the Antonines (AD 117–193).
In the 3rd century AD, Christianity began to take hold in the slave and plebeian classes, and to a lesser extent, in the military. At first, Diocletian (284–305) and other emperors persecuted Christians with zeal. After this "age of martyrs," however, Constantine ascended as emperor; in 315 he declared Christianity the state religion, and Rome became the spiritual center of the Christian world.
The Roman empire reached its maximum extent under Trajan (AD 98–117). Thereafter, so-called barbarians—migratory Central European tribes—began to tear away at the northern borders of the empire and were able to penetrate as far as Rome itself, which they sacked in AD 410. A succession of barbarian invasions followed, each further eroding the remnants of Roman authority and civilization. Finally, in 476, an Ostrogoth chieftain named Odoacer deposed the reigning emperor and had himself crowned king of Italy.
In the "Dark Ages" that followed the fall of Rome, the empire's former regional capitals were dominated by invading powers. These included the Lombards, the Franks, and the Normans. These foreign rulers largely lived outside of Italy, and in return for papal consecration as Holy Roman Emperor, allowed the pope and the Catholic Church to assume temporal control over the Italian peninsula. This cozy relationship between the Italian papacy and the northern emperors soon crumbled, however, instigating a series of bloody power struggles that rocked all of Europe.
By the late 14th century, in the regional centers of Padua, Milan, Rome, Florence, Siena, and Venice, intellectuals and artists began to rediscover and study the remnants of Roman and Greek culture. This rebirth of interest in classical philosophy, art, and learning led directly to the Renaissance, the great flowering of Italian culture that lasted until the late 16th century.
Although culturally dominant, the city-states of the Italian peninsula were not powerful enough to avoid becoming pawns in territorial wars between France, Spain, and the Austrians. In 1800, Napoleon conquered the entire peninsula. Although his control of a unified Italy was short-lived, it created a nationalistic fervor for an Italian state. In 1848 and 1859, Italians rallied behind nationalistic leaders Giuseppe Garibaldi, Giuseppe Mazzini, and Camillo Cavour, and rose up against their foreign overlords. In 1861, the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed; by 1870, the entire peninsula was at last united under the rule of King Vittorio Emanuele II.
Italy fought with the Allies in World War I. In the armistice, Italian territory expanded to include Trieste. The social and economic chaos that followed the war created a vacuum that was filled by the extreme nationalism of Benito Mussolini's Fascist Party. The reigning Italian king was forced to abdicate to Mussolini in 1922.
In 1940, Mussolini—known as Il Duce—allied Italy with Nazi Germany in World War II. The Allies landed in southern Italy in 1943 and began to battle their way up the peninsula. Mussolini was eventually captured and hanged in Milan in 1945.
After World War II, Italy voted to replace the old monarchy with an elected democracy, and the rebuilding of the country unleashed an unprecedented economic boom. By the late 1960s, unemployment and inflation soared. Unresolved social and political inequities began to surface, and corruption and intimidation by the Sicilian Mafia spread across the country.
Since the 1950s, Italy has been ruled by a centrist coalition of parties dominated by the Christian Democratic Party. However, the party's hegemony over Italian politics was destroyed in the early 1990s after the press and courts uncovered widespread and deep-rooted corruption of the party's public officials. In 1995, charges leveled against seven-term former prime minister Giulio Andreotti brought suggestions of Mafia collusion to the highest levels of the Italian government.
Even as Italy's present government vows to reform itself, the forces of regionalism and fragmentation increasingly dominate Italian life. In recent elections, mainstream Italian political parties have fared poorly, with fascist and regionalist groups now dominating the parliament. This reformist alliance's first prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, was himself forced to resign after a corruption scandal in 1994.