Massimo de Tzeilio was a Piedmontese politician, painter, and novelist, who served in the government during the dramatic days of Italian unification.

After his death, his memoirs were published. In them he wrote,

We have made Italy.

What remains is to make Italians.

As difficult as it had been to create a politically unified Italy,

to mold it together into one social and cultural entity would prove to be the greater challenge.

Welcome to the history of the 20th century.

The 20th century. Episode 23 Making Italians

Massimo D'Zélio had it right.

While there was a certain amount of friction between Germans of different states after German

unification happened, it was nothing compared to the growing pains of the new Kingdom of Italy.

Even before Italy was united under the Romans in the 3rd century BC, the peninsula was divided

into different ethnic groups, Latins, Gauls, Samnites, Greeks, post-Roman Italy was invaded

by a number of other nations, each of which left its cultural and, yes, genetic, stamp on Italy.

Goths, Lombards, Byzantines, Arabs, Norsemen.

There was a saying in the late 19th century in Italy that Africa begins just south of Rome.

I'd like to take a minute and unpack that statement. A lot of us think

of Italians as dark, by which I mean dark hair, dark eyes, and a dark complexion. And that's probably

a fair description of many Italians. But there's a lot of variety, as you might expect, in a country

that combines all those ethnic groups I mentioned.

There are blonde, blue-eyed Italians,

there are green-eyed ginger Italians,

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