Italy is a European country located in the Mediterranean Sea, with a population of around 60 million people. The main ethnic group is Italian, making up around 92% of the population. Other ethnic groups include German, French and Albanian. The majority of Italians are Roman Catholic, with other religions such as Islam and Protestantism making up much of the remaining population. Additionally, there is also a small Jewish minority living in Italy as well. The literacy rate in Italy is close to 98%, and the average life expectancy is 83 years. Check hyperrestaurant to learn more about Italy in 2009.
Social conditions
Today, Italy has a well-developed social insurance system. Visit AbbreviationFinder to see the definitions of ITA and acronym for Italy. Pension is usually paid at the age of 60 for men and 55 for women. In 1995, a new pension system was introduced which gradually raises the retirement age to 65 years and 60 years respectively. Health insurance is compulsory, and since 1980 medical and dental care has been largely free. The insurance also covers large parts of the cost of medicine. Compensation for illness is 50% during the first three weeks (with three waiting days), then 2/3 of the salary for forty weeks. Parental leave is granted two months before and three months after the child’s birth, with a possible extension of another six months. 80% of salary is paid during the first five months, then 30%. Child support is usually given up to the age of 18. Check to see Italy population.
In 2014, 12.7 percent of the total workforce was classified as unemployed. The regional variations are significant in this regard. Especially in the south and the major islands, the registered unemployment rate is often significantly higher than the national average. The number of women working for employment has increased sharply during the post-war period, and today about half of women are working in working age. In addition to regular salaries, employees receive a thirteenth monthly salary in general each year. Weekly working hours are 40 hours.
Legislation from 1970 (Statuto dei diritti dei lavoratori) regulates the right of association and negotiation. The unions are closely linked to the political parties and have been dominated since 1948 by the Communist affiliated Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro (CGIL), the Christian Democratic Confederazione Italiana Sindicati Lavoratori (CISL) and the socialist Unione Italiana del Lavoro (UIL). Together, these three organize about 35% of the country’s workers.
1870 Modern Italy gathers
Even before Napoleon’s fall in 1814, Víctor Manuel II, Camillo Benso Di Cavour, appointed President of the Council of Ministers. As a step towards unification, Cavour achieved that the kingdom of sardo-piamonte was transformed into the Italian kingdom (17/3 1861) from which only Rome and Veneto were excluded. In 1866 Veneto was annexed and in 1870 the Italians invaded Rome, and when Pope Pio IX refused to hand over power, he was locked inside the Vatican, where he and his successors had to become 1929. King Humberto I signed in 1878 the Tripel Alliance with Austria-Hungary and Germany and initiated colonial conquests of Eritrea and Somalia in Africa.
Under the influence of the Paris Commune in 1872 Italy’s first socialist organization was established. In 1892 it transformed into the Socialist Party of Italy (PSI). Against the background of industrialization – especially in the textile industry – the party quickly embarked on the northern part of the country, but the results were more sparse in the agricultural and relatively more declining southern Italy. Rerum Novarum (1891) paved the way for a far more militant Catholic professional organization. From 1870 to 1919, the right to vote was restricted, and there were no parties that could assert themselves at parliamentary level. Liberalism was the dominant political ideology. The one who formed the government accepted support from every side to get the largest possible parliamentary basis. This made it impossible to implement a political program, created extremely unstable governments and a parliament that was in fact completely powerless. The Liberal parliamentary rule was only broken when the general was introduced in 1919 voting rights for men. The new Catholic Partito Popolare and PSI then emerged as the major peoples.
When World War I broke out in 1914, Italy remained neutral, but after pressure from nationalist sectors and the left, the country ended up declaring war on its old allies in the Tripel Alliance. Benito Mussolini had been thrown out of the PSI for supporting the war, and when the war ended, he gathered the dissatisfaction of the people it had triggered. With a mixture of nationalism and pragmatism, he forced the labor movement to cooperate between capital and labor in the “nation’s interest”.
The Kingdom of the Langobards, from 568
In the next 15 years, Roman administration and defense were rebuilt, but in 568 a new Germanic people broke in across the borders from the northeast, the langobards. They had come from the north in the first centuries after our time, perhaps from Scandinavia. The langobards quickly gained a foothold in Italy, partly because of poor understanding between the Emperor of Byzantium and his representative in Italy. The Langobards won all over Northern Italy except Ravenna and the district around this city. Southern Italy with Rome and Naples, on the other hand, succeeded in defending the emperor’s troops.
The Langobards, when they broke into Italy, were a warrior and barbaric people. Unlike the Ostrogoths, they did not respect the Roman order of society. The Langobards failed to establish a strong central government for the first time, and it was local dukes who took over power and rule in the country, especially the dukes of Spoleto and Benevento gained an independent position. Later, the royal power became stronger; perhaps most due to constant struggles with the imperial territories. The dukes were reduced to royal officials, and under King Liutprand (712–744) Benevento and Spoleto were also placed under the king’s power.
In the emperor’s territories there was a corresponding reinforcement of the central government power. The supreme authority was assembled with the military commander, who was given the title of exarch and had his residence in Ravenna, which only in 751 succeeded the langobard king Aistulf. It was the demands of war that forced this collection of power on one hand.
One authority nevertheless retained its power in the imperial sphere: the pope in Rome. The papacy had become a considerable worldly power already under Pope Gregory the Great (590-604). The pope pursued his own policy, and despite the fact that his territory was actually in the Emperor’s land, he negotiated directly with other states, such as the kingdom of the langobards. It also succeeded in converting the langobards to Catholic doctrine and ending Aryanism from the mid-600s. This meant a significant increase in the Pope’s authority. When the Emperor of Byzantine in 726 issued a ban on all image cultivation, the pope opposed the ban, and there was a breach between the pope and the emperor. This was the reason why the pope sought support from the Frankish headmaster Pipin the little. In consideration for legitimizing Pipin’s takeover of the Franconian crown, the pope could now count on the support of the Franks against the langobards and the emperor of Byzantium.
In 751, the lobster king Aistulf took Ravenna, and appeared to be able to include all of Italy including Rome under his rule. Pope Stefan 2 succeeded in getting Pipin to go against Aistulf in 754. Pipin quickly made his way to Pavia and forced Aistulf to peace and to renounce most of the Greek exarchate around Ravenna to the Pope. Aistulf did not respect the peace agreement, and two years later Pipin forced him to agree again on the same terms. This time he also sent the Pope a solemn gift letter in the area that Aistulf had to relinquish. Together with the Duchy of Rome, this area became the Church State, which existed until Italy was gathered in 1870.
However, the battle between the langobards on one side and the pope and the Franks on the other did not end with the agreement in 756. When King Desiderius took up King Aistulf’s hostile policies and threatened Rome, the Frankish king Karl helped the great pope. Karl surrounded Desiderius in Pavia and forced him to go to a monastery, even taking the title of “king of the lobards” in 774. After that, Karl defeated rebellious langobard dukes and deployed Franks instead. In 800, Pope Leo 3 crowned him Roman emperor. The original Langobardian dukes of Benevento and Spoleto stayed until 1053 and 1213.
The German-Roman Empire, from 962
The Carolingians retained the emperor’s crown to 875. Then the imperial dignity went from man to man under intense internal strife, until King Otto 1 of Germany was summoned in 951 and crowned the king of the langobards in Pavia. In 962, he was crowned German-Roman emperor of Rome, a dignity that has since become a goal for German rulers throughout the ages.
Otto 1 laid down new rules for the Pope’s election, which was highly required, since in the first half of the 900s it was dominated by warring nobility parties in Rome. Otto also stated that the pope had to swear allegiance to the emperor before he assumed office. In 967 Otto crowned his son Otto 2 as emperor and arranged marriage between him and the daughter of the Byzantine emperor. His policy aimed, among other things, to gain power over the southern Italian dukes under the Emperor.
The connection between the papacy and the German kings prevented the unification of Italy under a national Italian authority. The German emperors considered themselves the heirs of the empire of Charlemagne. Italy was in the 900s and 1000s so politically divided between various worldly and spiritual earthlords that it was easy to submit to such a powerful power as the German. Moreover, the country was weakened by the ravages of the Arabs in Sicily and southern Italy. The economic structure of the country was mainly natural households with feudal organization, but very early on, the urban and monetary households began to gain momentum.
In a special position, Venice, which managed to maintain its political independence, was partly because of its well-protected location on the islands and partly by skilled diplomacy. Venice began distance trading before any other city in the Middle Ages and at a time when the Byzantine Empire and the Arabs restrained all trade in the Mediterranean. Already in the 800s, wholesale and substantial fortunes were concentrated in Venice. The deal went primarily to Bysants. The town supplied fish, salt, grain, timber and slaves (from the interior of the Adriatic) and in return bought expensive stuffs, weapons and spices from the east. Soon all of Northern Italy was drawn into this trade, and merchants from Genoa and Pisa took up competition with the Venetians, even going to battle against the Arabs and forcing them into favorable trade treaties. Already in 1016, the Arab city of Mahdia in Tunis was stormed.
Italian long-distance trade was in progress long before the crusades, but these were to have a strong stimulating effect by arousing the need for luxury goods from the East. The northern Italian cities were so early developed that they played a political role as early as the 11th century. In a number of cities there were strong tensions between the clergy, especially the bishops, and the wealthy citizens. The less powerful land-owning nobles around the towns often joined with the citizens, while the great vassals largely took their bail from the bishop and moved into his residence town.
In the conflicts with the bishops and the great vassals, the citizens and the nobles came so close together that the latter were granted civil rights in the cities. The two groups of people merged to form an upper class different from the citizen upper class in other countries. In the struggle, the bishops often relied on the small craftsmen and workers. The bishops were therefore not only powerful earth lords, but also highly participants in political life, and had been given the office of emperor because of political qualifications.