Italian irredentism in Switzerland was a political movement that promoted the unification to Italy of the Italian-speaking areas of Switzerland during the Risorgimento.
Italian irredentism in Switzerland was a political movement that promoted the unification to Italy of the Italian-speaking areas of Switzerland during the Risorgimento.
The current Italian Switzerland belonged to the Duchy of Milan until the 16th century, when it became part of Switzerland. These territories have maintained their native Italian population speaking the Italian language and the Lombard language, specifically the Ticinese dialect. In the early 19th century the ideals of unification in a single Nation of all the territories populated by Italian speaking people created the Italian irredentism. Italian irredentism in Switzerland was based on moderate Risorgimento ideals, and was promoted by Italian-Ticinese such as Adolfo Carmine. [1]
Following the rise to power of Italian Fascism, however, the initial moderate irredentism started to change to one full of aggression: the same Benito Mussolini created in the early 1930s the Partito Fascista Ticinese (Ticino Fascist Party). [2] The main ideal of this party was to bring the Italian frontier up to the Gottardo Pass (Catena mediana delle Alpi [3] ) in the Alps through political unrest and possible referendums (supported, in case of need, by the Italian Army). [4]
In 1934 the Ticino fascists held the "March on Bellinzona", similar to the March on Rome. However, it was successfully contrasted by socialist organizations, like "Liberi e Svizzeri" of Guglielmo Canevascini, promoted even by the Swiss government. [5]
Successively, in the 1935 elections the fascists obtained just 2% of the votes and since then their movement faded away to less than 100 members. [6]
Before World War II the Italian irredentism in Switzerland was reduced to have followers mainly between the descendants of Italians emigrated to Ticino at the end of the 19th century, but was ruled and promoted by a small group of ticino intellectuals with their active newspapers and propaganda.
The most important of these intellectuals was Teresina Bontempi, who created the magazine L'Adula. She denounced in her writings, together with Rosetta Colombi, the germanization of Canton Ticino promoted by the Swiss government. [7] Indeed, the German-speaking population in Canton Ticino went from 2.6% in 1837 to 5.34% in 1920 and nearly 10% in 1940. As a consequence of this political activity she was involved in continuous problems with the Swiss government, that finally jailed her in 1936. [8] She was forced to move to Italy as a political refugee after some months.
The most renowned fascist born in Canton Ticino was Aurelio Garobbio, who tried to imitate Gabriele D'Annunzio with his organization called Giovani Ticinesi. [9] After 1935 Garobbio was the main responsible of the Italian irredentism in Switzerland and was with Mussolini until his death in spring 1945, when he tried to organize a last fascist area of defense in Valtellina next to Ticino. [10]
After World War II, the Italian irridentism movement in Switzerland ceased, replaced by organisations advocating a defense of the Italian language and culture within the Swiss Confederation.
General Gabriele D'Annunzio, Prince of Montenevoso, sometimes written d'Annunzio as he used to sign himself, was an Italian poet, playwright, orator, journalist, aristocrat, and Royal Italian Army officer during World War I. He occupied a prominent place in Italian literature from 1889 to 1910 and later political life from 1914 to 1924. He was often referred to under the epithets il Vate and il Profeta.
Ticino, sometimes Tessin, officially the Republic and Canton of Ticino or less formally the Canton of Ticino, is one of the 26 cantons forming the Swiss Confederation. It is composed of eight districts and its capital city is Bellinzona. It is also traditionally divided into the Sopraceneri and the Sottoceneri, respectively north and south of Monte Ceneri. Red and blue are the colours of its flag.
Stefano Franscini was a Swiss politician and statistician. He was one of the initial members of the Swiss Federal Council elected in 1848 and Switzerland's first native Italian speaking federal councillor. Franscini was affiliated to the Liberal Radical Party of Switzerland. During his office tenure he held the Department of Home Affairs. Important elements of his political legacy include political reforms in the Ticino during the 1830s and 1840s, Switzerland's first federal population census in 1850, and the creation of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in 1854/1855.
The Ticino League is a regionalist, national-conservative political party in Switzerland active in the canton of Ticino.
The Lombard language belongs to the Gallo-Italic family and is a cluster of homogeneous dialects that are spoken by millions of speakers in Northern Italy and southern Switzerland, including most of Lombardy and some areas of the neighbouring regions, notably the eastern side of Piedmont and the western side of Trentino, and in Switzerland in the cantons of Ticino and Graubünden. The language is also spoken in Santa Catarina in Brazil by Lombard immigrants from the Province of Bergamo, in Italy.
Alceste De Ambris was an Italian syndicalist, the brother of fascist politician Amilcare De Ambris. He was a Freemason and had a major part to play in the agrarian strike actions of 1908 in Parma.
Italian irredentism was a political movement during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Italy with irredentist goals which promoted the unification of geographic areas in which indigenous peoples were considered to be ethnic Italians. At the beginning, the movement promoted the annexation to Italy of territories where Italians formed the absolute majority of the population, but retained by the Austrian Empire after the Third Italian War of Independence in 1866. During World War I the main "irredent lands" were considered to be the provinces of Trento and Trieste and, in a narrow sense, irredentists referred to the Italian patriots living in these two areas.
The Ticinese dialect is the set of dialects, belonging to the Alpine and Western branch of the Lombard language, spoken in the northern part of the Canton of Ticino (Sopraceneri); the dialects of the region can generally vary from valley to valley, often even between single localities, while retaining the mutual intelligibility that is typical of the Lombard linguistic continuum.
The Università della Svizzera italiana, sometimes referred to as the University of Lugano in English-speaking contexts, is a public Swiss university established in 1995, with campuses in Lugano, Mendrisio and Bellinzona. USI is the only university in Switzerland where the official language is Italian, but many of its programs are in English.
Ticino has a long tradition of winemaking, being the southernmost region of Switzerland. Wine has been produced there since the Roman era. The region is known for its Merlot, which was introduced in the early 20th century.
The Italian language in the Italian Switzerland or Swiss Italian is the variety of the Italian language taught in the Italian-speaking area of Switzerland. While this variety is mainly spoken in the canton of Ticino and in the southern part of Grisons, Italian is spoken natively in the whole country by about 700,000 people: Swiss Italians, Italian immigrants and Swiss citizens with Italian citizenship.
Someo is a village and former municipality in the district of Vallemaggia in the canton of Ticino, Switzerland.
Diplomatic relations between Italy and Switzerland have traditionally been close and are currently governed by a complex set of treaties.
The pane ticinese is a white bread traditionally made in the Swiss canton of Ticino, but also available in the rest of Switzerland, where it is known as "Bread of Ticino". In Ticino, it is referred to by a number of names specific to the region, including pane riga, reale or lireta.
Teresina Bontempi was an Italian-speaking Swiss writer and editor from Canton Ticino, Switzerland. She promoted Italian irredentism in southern Switzerland in the 1930s with her magazine L' Adula.
The University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland is one of the Universities of Applied Sciences of the Swiss Confederation. SUPSI offers more than 30 bachelor and master courses, complementing theoretical scientific knowledge and practical technological advances applied to real projects. Various departments of SUPSI are mainly based in Southern Switzerland. Instruction is mainly in Swiss Italian, with some courses delivered in English and German.
The Grand Council of Ticino is the legislature for the Swiss canton of Ticino. The 90-member council is elected every four years by proportional representation in a single constituency comprising the citizens resident in the canton, and meets at the Ursoline Palace in the capital, Bellinzona. Members are called Deputies (deputati).
Giovanni Bianconi was a Swiss-Italian poet, artist and ethnographer.
The Communist Party is a cantonal political party in Switzerland active in Ticino and Grisons. From October 1944 until 2007, it acted as the Ticino section of the Swiss Party of Labour. In 2007, it decided to change its name to the Communist Party. In 2014, the party severed its ties with the Party of Labour. Its headquarters are in Locarno, Ticino.
Giuseppe Mastromattei was an Italian Fascist politician and civil servant, who served as prefect of Bolzano from 1933 to 1940. He was the longest serving prefect of the province of Bolzano and oversaw the forced Italianization of South Tyrol under the Fascist regime, as well as the South Tyrol Option Agreement of 1939.
