grand Duchy of Tuscany at the death of Maria Louise (1847), when the Bourbons of Parma
moved to the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza;
- the Grand Duchy of Tuscany given to Ferdinand III of Hapsburg-Lorain (1814-1824), brother
of the Austrian Emperor Francis I of Hapsburg (1806-1832);
- the Papal State without Avignon, given back to Pius VII (1800 - 1823);
- the Kingdom of the two Sicilies given to Ferdinand IV of Bourbon (1815 - 1825);
- the Kingdom of Sardinia given to Victor Emanuel of Savoy (1802 - 1825 ) including Savoy,
Piedmont, Nice, Sardinia with the added territory of the former republic of Genoa3.
With the development of the stronger nations (England, France, Germany, Austria and Russia), Europe reached its zenith, and this occurred during the second half of the century. During the following thirty years, the consolidation of capitalism, the intensity of the industrial revolution would give rise to sharper economic competition and a swifter race to arms. At the same time the need to expand commercially, politically and culturally at a world level was more greatly felt. The first and more widespread manifestation of all this was the appearance of Colonialism, with the consequent overturning of the extra-European areas4. This is the time when two major powers come to the fore in world history: USA and Japan.
We should not overlook the massive phenomenon of emigration which, from 1842 to 1914, led to some 30 to 35 million Europeans leaving the Old Continent and spreading through the entire world. A significant factor was strong demographic pressure: the population of Europe, including Russia, was 180 million around the 1800s. In 1850, the population reached 274 million, and in the 1900's, it reached 423 million.
Together with the growing complications created by economic life, new social and political orders, and by the admittedly slow-growing expansion of freedoms, in-roads were also made by evidently pluralistic world views, political ideologies and new moral and religious ideas. New and different directions emerged both in ideas and activities regarding individual destiny and ways of associating. Besides persistent conservative and at times reactionary forces, new ideologies arose: liberal ideologies which continued the substantially bourgeois aspect of the French revolution; democratic and radical ideologies more closely connected with the Jacobean expressions of the French revolution; national and, later on, nationalistic ideologies of Romantic origin; still later on, socialist ideologies on the one hand, and Christian social ideologies, on the other5.
For an understanding of the Italian spiritual world, its pastoral structure, the nature of the initiatives related to social work and education and catechetical instruction, it may be useful to take an historical look at the leading Italian region of Piedmont. The reason behind this is that Piedmont had been connected with decisive events and remarkable changes in the various fields of politics and religion in the socio-economic field as well as in educational and scholastic fields.
1. Elements contributing to political change
The main political event is the unification of Italy as a nation, and the end of the temporal power of the
3 The Republic of San Marino retained its secular independence.
4 On imperialism and colonialism of the 19th century cf. A. Desideri, Storia e storiografia, .2 Dall’illuminismo all’età
dell’imperialismo, (Messina-Firenze: G. D’Anna 1997), 1337; R. Marx and R. Poidevin, Dalla riuzione francese
all’imperialismo, (Milan: CDE 1990), 410; P. Cinanni, Emigrazione e imperialismo, (Rome: Editori Riuniti 1975), 258;
F. Boiardi, Storia delle dottrine politiche, . 5 Colonialismo e imperialismo (1875-1945),. (Milan: Nuova CEI 1982),
911; G. Balandier et al., Le religioni nell’età del colonialismo e del neocolonialismo, (Bari – Rome: Laterza 1990, 24),
307.
5 R. Albrecht-Carrié, Le riuzioni nazionali, (Turin: UTET 1981), 543.