Italy was once a collection of seven separate states before a 19th-century uprising
Long before it was a unified nation, Italy existed as a fractured collection of seven independent states, each with its own ruler, until a 19th-century wave of republican idealism transformed the peninsula.
The modern nation of Italy was born from the Risorgimento, a movement that sought to unify seven distinct states into a single republic. In 1831, Giuseppe Mazzini founded the Young Italy society to challenge monarchical rule and revive the ancient Roman concept of Res Publica, where power belonged to the people rather than a single king.
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