Victor Emmanuel II Is Proclaimed King of a United Italy
Garibaldi's redshirts, Cavour's diplomacy, and a Savoy king combine to finish the Risorgimento
Quick facts
- Kingdom of Italy proclaimed
- March 17, 1861
- US recognition
- April 11, 1861
- Key figures
- Victor Emmanuel II, Cavour, Garibaldi
- Rome joins the kingdom
- 1870
What happened
Through the 1850s, a growing movement called the Risorgimento pushed to unite the separate Italian states into a single country, led politically by the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia's king Victor Emmanuel II and his prime minister Camillo di Cavour, who played French and Austrian rivalries against each other to expand Piedmontese territory across northern and central Italy. In 1860 the general Giuseppe Garibaldi, a longtime champion of Italian republican revolution, led a volunteer army, the Expedition of the Thousand, to conquer Sicily and Naples from Bourbon rule and then handed his conquests over to Victor Emmanuel rather than ruling them himself. On March 17, 1861, the first Italian Parliament, meeting in Turin, proclaimed Victor Emmanuel II King of Italy. The United States recognized the new kingdom weeks later, on April 11, 1861. Rome, still held by the pope, was declared the eventual capital but would not actually join the kingdom until 1870.
Why it matters
The 1861 proclamation created a single Italian kingdom for the first time since the Roman Empire, ending thirteen centuries of political fragmentation covered across this entire timeline. It came from an uneasy three-way partnership between a monarch, a diplomat, and a general who did not fully trust one another, and Cavour, who died just three months later, reportedly said on his deathbed, "Italy is made. All is safe."
How we know
The 1861 proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy and the specific date of United States diplomatic recognition are documented in official U.S. State Department historical records, and the political roles of Cavour, Garibaldi, and Victor Emmanuel II are corroborated by contemporary Italian parliamentary records and European diplomatic correspondence of the period.
Sources
- U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian. Italy · Primary source (author-declared)history.state.gov · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- World History Encyclopedia. Giuseppe Verdi · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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