Ideology and foreign policy in the nineteenth century: France, Austria, and the unification of Italy

The unification of Italy is typically viewed in the context of its place in larger questions about Italian history, but its international dimension is frequently neglected. The policies pursued by Austria and France, in particular, played a crucial role in determining the course of events in Italy, and moreover, events in Italy had important repercussions for Austria and France, and for Europe as a whole. France joined the Italian kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia in a war to drive Austria from the Italian peninsula in 1859, but after a partial victory, chose to attempt to work with Austria to shape a settlement for the peninsula. When this effort at cooperation failed, both powers found that events in Italy had passed largely beyond their control, and were forced to reassess their goals and expectations. A close look at French and Austrian diplomacy between 1858 and 1861 shows how the interplay between the pre-existing ideological commitments of the two great powers and the actual events in Italy shaped the course of Italian and European history. French involvement in Italy was shaped by the conflict between two different conceptions of France's role in international relations: a radical support for the cause of "revolution" in Italy and elsewhere, exemplified by the attitudes of France's emperor, Napoleon III, and a conservative opposition to a revolutionary policy which would threaten the European peace and the Catholic Church, held to by most French elites, including many of Napoleon III's ministers and advisors. The contradictions between these two positions often made French policy incoherent and ineffectual. The Austrian leaders, on the other hand, pursued a consistent policy of rigid conservatism and adherence to treaty rights, which they took to be the necessary policy of their idiosyncratic and vulnerable state, but which, in the end, proved incompatible with reality and led them to make irretrievable mistakes and miss major opportunities. Thus historical memory in Austria and France played a major role in shaping a settlement in Italy that neither power particularly desired.