IRREDENTISMO. — I., a phenomenon that was almost exclusively Italian, was more than a doctrine: it was a political movement animated chiefly by sentimental motives and surrounded by a certain mystical aura, expressed even in the word itself, which derived from the hypothetical existence of a servitude still in need of redemption. As with every other movement, so also in this case one can find an ideological substratum, which it derives from the nationalistic conception of the Risorgimento, to which it is connected.
With the application of the principle of nationality (v.), the conclusion was then reached that all the sections of the Italian people, speaking the same language and possessing the same culture, ought to be united
under the same national political regime, so as to achieve the natural coincidence of nationality and the State. Once the aim had been largely attained through the constitution of the unitary Italian State under the Savoy dynasty, the principle continued to influence minds and led them to regard the work of redemption as still not entirely complete, since some provinces had remained under foreign rule.
Two classic concepts of nationalism may therefore be regarded as the ideal springs driving the irredentist movement: on the one hand, the right of those sections of the nationality that had remained outside the orbit of the national State to join the already unified majority; on the other, the injustice of their subjection to a foreign State, from which it was then inferred that the nationality had the power to rise up against the State to which it had remained subject, and that the national State had the power to undertake its liberation or redemption from foreign servitude.
This collection of principles and conclusions, although it was not incorporated into an organic doctrine, falls under the criticism directed against the principle of nationality, which cannot by itself establish the asserted right, nor does it provide a basis for qualifying as unjust the political subjection of part of the nation to a power of a different nationality. If, moreover, the principles implicit in i. have no moral or juridical value, then neither does the conclusion drawn from them concerning the power to rise up against the State in order to obtain independence, or to undertake through war the redemption of the nationality. Catholic doctrine, respectful of the acquired rights of the State and of the duties of subjection incumbent upon the ethnically foreign minorities living within it, has constantly excluded the liberation of nationalities from the just causes of war, and the mere desire for independence or national unity from the motives of legitimate resistance to constituted powers. The picture of the conclusions could, however, change if the State were to assume the role of oppressor and tyrant of the nationality, attempting to level it and violently absorb it into the majority, preventing it from preserving and developing its own peculiarities and culture.
Historically, i. began in Italy immediately after the annexation of Venetia. On the occasion of Vittorio Emanuele II’s journey to Udine in 1866, a large number of Giuliani, who had remained under Austrian rule, organized a great demonstration of Italian identity, while at the same time agitation for independence began in Trentino. Its character, more sentimental than theoretical, is revealed by the fact that the irredentist claims were directed exclusively toward certain border territories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and among these preferably toward Trentino and Venezia Giulia, with the illogical neglect of Dalmatia, although it too was considered to possess Italian culture, and even more so of the provinces subjected, on the other side of the Alps, to French rule: Savoia and the Island of Corsica.
I. was eminently anti-Austrian and acted during the various phases of history as a stimulus to the national idea, at times suppressed by governments eager to avoid international complications during certain periods of internal consolidation, at other times exploited as an agitational idea. When Italy entered the war against Austria on the occasion of the First World War, i. exerted a great influence in stirring people’s hearts, particularly among university youth, together with the resurgent nationalism with which it had practically merged through a commonality of ideals.
Political errors committed by Austria and certain victims claimed by the repression, such as Oberdan in 1880, rekindled it both within and beyond the national borders, facilitating the activity of certain associations founded for this purpose. Among these, although it had set itself cultural aims, particular mention should be made of the « Dante Alighieri ». The favorable outcome
of the First World War, with the collapse of the Austrian Empire, removed the movement’s incentive, since it saw the unitary aims for which it had fought achieved.