Hello and welcome to revolutions.

Episode 7.5, Resorgimento.

Last week, we covered the breadth and depth of the Austrian Empire.

And as I said, there would be two subsets of the Austrian Empire that would demand much fuller treatment, Italy and Hungary.

So this week we will cover Italy, and then next week, the Kingdom of Hungary.

And then with our large circuit of groundwork laid over the first six

episodes, we will tie everything back together in episode 7.7 with the discussion of the

general economic depression and social crisis that hit Europe in the mid-1840s. And then,

with a little luck, we'll actually get going with something resembling a plot. So to introduce Italy, I am going to, yes, organically tie it back to the storm before the storm,

the beginning of the end of the Roman Republic, forthcoming from Public Affairs, October the 24th, 2017.

Thank you so much to everyone who has pre-ordered the book.

We are, in fact, well on our way to our goal.

And if you haven't already pre-ordered it, well, now is as good a time as any. I'll wait for you

until you get back. Okay, did you do it? Fantastic. Thank you very much. Now, if you listen to that

first chapter I released, the beasts of Italy, I briefly touched on the fact that Italy in the second century BC was not a unified state.

It had never been a unified state.

The Romans had conquered the peninsula during the Samnite Wars, but rather than annexed their defeated enemies, they signed treaties with them that created a Roman-led political confederation.

So the Italians were not Roman citizens.

They were simply allies.

And in chapter two of the book, the stepchildren of Rome, I break down the hierarchy of citizenship

and rights in Roman Italy because the growing dissatisfaction of the allies is one of the

major threads of the book.

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