A Lombard-Velencei Királyság
The Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom

Summary/Abstract: The essay surveys the three main periods of nineteenth-century Austrian presence in Italy from 1797 to 1866. The two parts of the artifically created Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom had different histories, and different social and institutional conditions in the beginning, and the imperial government had to take that into consideration. The essay surveys in detail the institutions and characteristics of the machinery of public administration developed in the two provinces in Northern Italy, as well as their changes during the decades. The elements of autonomous administration played a particularly important role at the level of villages and congregations, which, until 1848, was someting unique within the Austrian Empire. The creation of modern constitutinal institutions were several times on the agenda during the period under discussion: first of all in 1848 during the revolutionary movements; then from 1857, Prince Ferdinand Maximilien as Governor General made an attempt to create a national-provincial representative body composed of the elite, but he could not persuade the emperor to support his plan; after the loss of Lombardy, in the autumn of 1860, the issue was again put on the agenda, and then in 1863 the Statute of the Province of Venice was elaborated and issued. The imperial government tried, in parallel with the political and institutional integration of the provinces, to tie the region economically stronger to the whole of the empire. Lombardy was one of the most important industrial areas of Austria; Venice, on the other hand, remained almost exclusively agricultural. The government in Vienna was accused — sometimes unjustly — of degrading, by its economic policies, the Italian provinces to the status of primary producers. When the Northern Italian subjects complained of the „Germanization” of their country, what they meant was not linguistical Germanization, but the fact that decisions in connection with politics, economy, and taxation were made outside the borders of the country. Resistance to the Austrian presence in Italy manifested itself in a number of different ways, the urban intelligentsia being its main basis. What was most uncomfortable for the government was that great parts of the elite groups refused to take part in the administration of the country. Secret societies sprang up all over the country, plotting murderous attempts, supporting the emigration, and, in the last phase, propagating passive resistance, complete withdrawal from public life.

• Details
• Contents