Springtime of Nations is a term used to refer to the liberal revolutions that swept Europe in 1848. From Ireland to Poland to Hungary they sought to overthrow imperialism and despotism and replace it with nations governing themselves. Overall, the revolutions were unsuccessful and short-lived, but many laid the groundwork for later successful uprisings. One of these revolutions occurred in the Austrian controlled territory of Venice where for a year and a half liberal nationalists maintained their own polity. To this day, Venice has a reputation for fierce independence, and this is the history we will cover today.
The Most Serene Republic of Venice was a Mediterranean superpower for the better part of a millennium, but by the time Napoleon demanded the Doge’s resignation in 1797, Venetian glory days were long gone. After France’s defeat in the Napoleonic Wars, Venice did not regain its ancient independence and became a part of the Austrian Empire in 1815. Austrian rule was not kind to Venice, as the Hapsburgs were not interested in maintaining the city as the trade hub it had once been, and Venetian resentment grew for decades until the fateful Springtime of Nations. Austria had a great deal of fires to put out in 1848, not only in Hungary but in the capital city as well. A liberal patriot, Daniele Manin, was freed from jail and was the appointed leader of the movement against the Austrians. Addressing the people right after his release, he proclaimed,
“Citizens! I do not know what winds I was drawn from the silence of my prison and taken to St. Mark’s Square. But I see in your faces, in the liveliness of your attitudes, that the feelings of love of country and national spirit have made great progress here, during my imprisonment, I enjoy it highly and in the name of the homeland I thank you for it. But deh! do not want to forget that there can be no true and lasting freedom, where there is no order, and that you must be jealous guardians of order if you want to show yourselves worthy of freedom. There are solemn moments and cases in which insurrection is not only a right, but it is also a duty.”
The Austrians quickly found their position in Venice untenable and retreated to a series of forts in Veneto-Lombardy, The Austrian parts of Venice and Milan, as city and towns all over the province threw off reactionary rule. In the meantime, the Republic of San Marcos was proclaimed with Daniele Manin as the president and set to work administering a free-trade liberal government to replace the protectionist conservative Austrian occupation. The name San Marcos comes from the patron saint of Venice, St. Mark. The Venetians received military aid from the Kingdom of Sardinia, whose long term project was a unified Italy (with them naturally as the rulers). This conflict became known as the first Italian War of Independence, and the Republic of San Marcos reluctantly traded their sovereignty for promises of military victory. These promises were unfulfilled, and Austria marched through Venice after a long siege in August 1849. Danin fled to France and died in exile. On his deathbed, he confessed “I hear from many that the failure of the great Italian movement of 1848 is to be ascribed to the loyalty, moderation and generosity that we have shown towards our enemies. I think this is a mistake, and a pernicious mistake… In material undeserved defeat, repairable, the intimate voice of moral superiority is comfort, strength is strength. Even when, which I do not believe, it could have been won by means that the moral sense condemns, victory would have been bought at an excessively expensive price, and would have been neither truly useful nor lasting effect… No victory deserves to be bought with self-contempt.”
Venice was finally freed from Austrian rule in 1866, after the Third and final Italian War of independence, one of the last parts of Italy proper to be annexed (other than Rome itself). Venice and Veneto never quite fully assimilated into the new Italian Kingdom however, and in 1919 there was a fear among the central government that Venice could be the Italian Ireland, a restive region that would break the country in two. Mussolini, as part of his authoritarian conception of nationalism, suppressed the Venetian language in favor of Italian.
After the war Veneto became one of the hotspots for autonomism and a federal Italy, in contrast to the centralized nature of the kingdom (which became a republic in 1946). This only intensified after Veneto experienced an economic boom in the 60s and 70s, making its taxpayers resentful of the central government sending all their money to the poorer South. In 1978, the Liga Veneta (venetian league) was founded and slowly grew to dominate regional politics in Veneto, getting 62% of the vote in the 2020 regional elections. In 1991 they joined with other regional nationalist parties to form Lega Nord, which advocated for an independent Northern Italian state called Padania. Lombardy, Veneto’s sister region under Austrian rule, also has a strong nationalist sentiment. By 2018 Lega dropped its explicit separatism (and even its second word) to pander for right wing southern votes on the national level, but Liga Veneta still believes in hard core regionalism, organizing referenda in 2014 and 2017 where large majorities voted for independence and/or extensive expansion of regional powers. Venetian nationalism is not limited to electoral politics, with the Venetian Most Serene Government (VSG) occupying St. Marks Plaza in 1997 with an armored truck to demand independence.
This relic of the Springtime of Nations has an all too familiar story: The liberators of yesterday become the oppressors of tomorrow. In 2011 Venetian nationalist youths burned an effigy of Giuseppe Garibaldi, the hero of the Italian Unification. National liberation was the war cry of the ‘48ers and these principles of self-determination and self-governance still ring true. But history shows us that hunger for power degrades and destroys liberty, and heroes become morally compromised, going from “the hero of the New and Old worlds to, as the Venetians wrote on their Garibaldi “the hero of the filth”. Long live Venice, and may 1000 flowers bloom!