238 Pages
    by Routledge

    224 Pages
    by Routledge

    Cavour was perhaps the key figure in the process of Italian unification. As prime minister of Piedmont, still reeling from military humiliation by Austria, he turned his backward and insignificant home state into the nucleus of the new Italy by his astute manipulation of the European great powers, becoming the united country's first prime minister in the year of his death, 1861. Harry Hearder's incisive study, setting Cavour and the Risorgimento in the full context of international European power-politics, reveals a ruthless, egocentric and far from balanced man - but a politician of genius.

    Preface
    List of abbreviations
    1. Origins, boyhood and youth, 1810-30
    2. Lover, farmer and speculator, 1830-48
    3. Cavour's economic and political philosophy
    4. Power and the first taste of European politics
    5. The alliance with France 1856-59
    6. The war of 1859: its preparations and consequences
    7. Cavour and Gariboldi in the final struggle to reunite Italy, 1860-61
    8. Cavour and the historians
    9. Sequel and conclusions
    Chronology
    Bibliographical Note
    Map
    Index

    Biography

    Harry Hearder