Perfect Fusion

The Perfect Fusion (Italian: Fusione perfetta) was the 1847 act of the Savoyard king Charles Albert of Sardinia which abolished the administrative differences between the Mainland states (Savoy and Piedmont) and the island of Sardinia, in a fashion similar to the Acts of Union between Great Britain and Ireland in 1800.

The Kingdom of Sardinia had become a possession of the House of Savoy in 1720, and it had continued to be ruled as during the ages of the Spanish Empire.

This situation became a problem for some Sardinian notables from Cagliari and Sassari when liberal reforms began to be put in force in Turin, and some of them started to see their separate legal system as a handicap more than a privilege; other Sardinian notables, like Giovanni Battista Tuveri and Federico Fenu, were hostile to the idea, in fear of further moves toward the centralisation of the Savoy-led Kingdom. King Charles Albert eventually solved the problem by transforming all his dominions into a single, centralized state.

A new legal system entered into force in Sardinia, and the last viceroy, Claudio Gabriele de Launay, left Cagliari on 4 March 1848. The island was divided into three provinces ruled by their prefects, following the system already used in Piedmont in 1815.

According to Pietro Martini, the ultimate goal of the unionist movement was "to transplant, without any reserves and obstacles, the culture and civilization of the Italian Mainland to Sardinia, and thereby form a single civil family under a Father better than a King, the great Charles Albert".[1] Moreover, the fusion was supposed to spur commercial development in Sardinia and, by 1861, according to William S. Craig (then British consul-general at Cagliari), increase the kingdom's importance;[2] however, the island lost what little autonomy it had in the process, rasing the so-called "Sardinian Question":[3][4][5][6][7] more specifically, Sardinians lost their former powers of taxation and autonomous representation in exchange for the Piedmontese parliament taking over legislative responsibility on the island, and some seats in the Congress.[8] Most of the Sardinian unionists, including its leader Giovanni Siotto Pintor, would later regret it.[9][10]

References

  1. ↑ Martini, Pietro. Sull’unione civile della Sardegna colla Liguria, col Piemonte e colla Savoia, Cagliari, Timon, 1847, pp.4
  2. ↑ O.J. Wright. "Sea and Sardinia: Pax Britannica versus Vendetta in the New Italy (1870)." European History Quarterly. Volume 37, Number 3 (July 2007). p. 409.
  3. ↑ Glossario di autonomia Sardo-Italiana, Francesco Cesare Casùla, Presentazione del 2007 di Francesco Cossiga
  4. ↑ Sardegna, isola del silenzio, Manlio Brigaglia
  5. ↑ Francesco Cesare Casula, Breve Storia di Sardegna, p. 245; op. cit.
  6. ↑ La “fusione perfetta” del 1847 aprì una nuova era per l’isola, La Nuova Sardegna
  7. ↑ M. Brigaglia, La Sardegna nel ventennio fascista, p. 317
  8. ↑ De La Calle, Luis (2015). Nationalist violence in postwar Europe, pp. 188
  9. ↑ 29 novembre 1847: la Fusione perfetta, una data infausta per i Sardi e la Sardegna - Francesco Casula
  10. ↑ Un arxipèlag invisible: la relació impossible de Sardenya i Còrsega sota nacionalismes, segles XVIII-XX - Marcel Farinelli, Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Institut Universitari d'Història Jaume Vicens i Vives, pp.299-300
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.