Since the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century the Italian peninsular had not been a unified political power instead it comprised of partitioned powers known as city states and papal states. Between the fifteenth and eighteenth century 'Italy' was plagued by foreign domination. The concept for the desire of an Italian national identity can be traced back far to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Both Machiavelli and Dante envisaged 'Italia' as a …showed first 75 words of 1247 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1247 total…go against the papal word. It can therefore be seen that there were a number of reasons for the cause of Italian Unity to make such slow progress before 1850, in short it can be attributed to diversity of agenda and the fact that there was no great call for unity, thus people were not motivated to form a co-ordinated and effective movement to achieve it. In addition foreign influence and its legacy slowed the progress.