#counryhumans austrian empire

[sane-human]

"The word "Italy" is a geographical expression, a qualification that concerns the language, but which does not have the political value that the efforts of revolutionary ideologues tend to imprint on it."

"You're an idiot"

On August 2, 1847, the Austrian statesman Klemens Von Metternich wrote the famous and controversial phrase "Italy is a geographical expression" in a note sent to Count Dietrichstein. This sentence was taken up the following year by the Neapolitan newspaper Il Nazionale, reporting it, however, in a derogatory sense: "Italy is nothing but a geographical expression"; in the midst of the riots of 48, the Italian liberals polemically appropriated this latter interpretation by using it, in a patriotic key, to awaken anti-Austrian sentiment in Italians.