Piedmont & the House of Savoy

Published Dec. 11, 2008 at 3:24 p.m.
Piedmont
...is one of the 20 Regions of Italy. Area: 25,399 km². Pop: ~4.4 million. Capital: Turin. Dialect: Piedmontese; Occitan is also spoken although not an official language, a dialect, spoken by a minority. Piedmont is a contraction of "Ai piedi del monte", meaning "At the base of the mountain".

Economy
Lowland Piedmont is a fertile agricultural region, producing wheat, rice, maize, and grapes. Piedmont is one of the great winegrowing regions in Italy. More than half of its 700 km² (170,000 acres) of vineyards are registered with DOC designations and produce wines such as Barolo, Barbaresco and Moscato d'Asti. Indigenous grape varieties include Nebbiolo, Barbera, Dolcetto, Freisa, Grignolino and Brachetto. The region contains major industrial centres, notably Turin, home to the FIAT automobile works. Biella produces tissues and silks; Cuneo is the home of Ferrero's chocolate factories and important mechanical industries. In February 2006 Turin hosted the XX Olympic Winter Games and in 2007 the Universiades, Olympic games for university students.

Demographics
The Turin metro area grew rapidly in the 1950s and 1960s due to an increase of immigrants from southern Italy. Today it has a population of approx. 2 million. As of 2006, the Italian national institute of statistics (ISTAT) estimated that 231,611 foreign-born immigrants live in Piedmont, equal to 5.3% of the total regional population.



The House of Savoy (Casa Savoia)

...was formed in the early 11th century in the historical Savoy region. Through gradual expansion, it grew from ruling a small county to eventually rule the Kingdom of Italy until the end of the Second World War. At the time that it ended (1946), the House of Savoy was the longest surviving royal house in Europe, second only perhaps to Japan's in the world.

The House of Savoy emerged, along with the free communes of Switzerland, in what is now Switzerland. The name derives from the historical region Savoy in what is now France. Over time the house expanded from that region to rule almost all of the Italian Peninsula. Their growth and survival over the centuries was not based on spectacular conquests, but rather on gradual territorial expansion through marriage and methodical and highly manipulative political acquisitions.

Fascism and end of monarchy: When the First World War ended, the Treaty of Versailles fell short of what had been promised to Italy in the London Pact. As the economic conditions in Italy worsened after the war, popular resentment and along with it the seeds of Italian fascism began to grow, resulting in the March on Rome by Benito Mussolini.

General Pietro Badoglio advised King Victor Emmanuel III that he could easily sweep Mussolini and his Blackshirt army to one side, but Victor Emmanuel decided to tolerate Mussolini. Later, the King's failure to move against the Mussolini regime's abuses of power led to much criticism. Though the King claimed in his memoirs that it was the fear of a civil war that motivated his actions, it would seem that he received some 'alternative' advice, possibly from Antonio Salandra and possibly some pro-Fascist elements in his immediate family, including Margherita of Savoy, his mother. In retrospect, members of the House of Savoy and the moneyed class in Italy felt that Mussolini and his regime offered a more stable and appealing option to the other alternative they perceived: socialism.

Eventually, the King's decision had dire consequences for Italy and for the monarchy itself. On October 28, 1922, Victor Emmanuel III selected Mussolini to become Italian Prime Minister, allowing Mussolini and the Fascist Party to pursue their political ambitions as long as they supported the monarchy. As Mussolini and the axis powers failed in the Second World War Victor Emmanuel removed Mussolini from office in 1943 and named Pietro Badoglio as his replacement. However, he made a blunder when he negotiated a surrender to the Allies without ordering the army to defend Rome. Left without orders, the army virtually disintegrated. Victor Emmanuel and his government fled south to Brindisi. Victor Emmanuel transferred most of his powers to his son, Crown Prince Umberto (April 1944). Within a year, public opinion forced a plebiscite to decide between retaining the monarchy or becoming a republic. In hopes of influencing the vote, Victor Emmanuel formally abdicated on May 9, 1946. It did not work; 54% of voters favored declaring a republic in the referendum held less than a month later. The Savoy family was required to leave the country. Taking refuge in Egypt, Victor Emmanuel died in Alexandria in 1947 and was buried there.

The rule of the House of Savoy thus ended with the 1946 referendum by which Italians chose the republic as the form of state (see birth of the Italian Republic). Under the Constitution of the Italian Republic, male descendants of the House of Savoy were forbidden from entering Italy. This provision was removed in 2002 but as part of the deal to be allowed back into Italy, Vittorio Emanuele the last claimant to the House of Savoy renounced all claims to the throne.

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