AD 1650-1800 Early modern

Italy was peaceful in the later 17th century AD under Spanish dominion. After Spain’s last Habsburg king died, a war of succession broke out (1701-13) in which Austria supplanted Spain as the dominant power in Italy. This was the first of several conflicts in which Italy was the prize. In 1733 (War of the Polish Succession), Charles of Bourbon took Naples and Sicily from the Austrians. At the end of the War of the Austrian Succession (1748), more changes were made to Bourbon and Austrian territories.

The foreign wars shook the Italian states, dormant after 200 years of Spanish rule. Some of their despotic rulers attempted economic and educational reforms. The city republics of Venice and Genoa went into decline. The popes maintained autocratic rule in the Papal States, but lost influence with the major Catholic powers. Science and scholarship flourished, however, helping to create a secular national culture.

The outbreak of the French Revolution (1789) was welcomed among Italian reformers, and some supported Napoleon’s invasion of Italy in 1794-6. Napoleon broke Austria’s supremacy, abolished the Papal States and established revolutionary governments. A second Napoleonic invasion in 1799 established more permanent and centralised French control that was to last for 15 years.