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Italy
Italian Republic National
name: Repubblica Italiana President: Giorgio Napolitano (2006) Prime Minister: Silvio Berlusconi
(2008)
Current government officials
Land area: 113,521 sq mi (294,019 sq km);
total area: 116,305 sq mi (301,230 sq km) Population (2008 est.): 58,145,321 (growth
rate: 0.0%); birth rate: 8.3/1000; infant mortality rate: 5.6/1000;
life expectancy: 80.0; density per sq km: 197
Capital and largest city (2003 est.):
Rome, 3,550,900 (metro. area), 2,455,600 (city
proper) Other large cities: Milan,
1,180,700; Naples, 991,700; Turin, 856,000; Palermo, 651,500; Genoa,
602,500; Bologna, 369,300; Florence, 351,600; Bari, 311,900; Catania,
305,900; Venice, 265,700 Monetary
unit: Euro (formerly lira)
Languages:
Italian (official); German-, French-, and
Slovene-speaking minorities
Ethnicity/race:
Italian (includes small clusters of German-,
French-, and Slovene-Italians in the north and Albanian- and
Greek-Italians in the south)
Religions:
Roman Catholic approx. 90%, Protestant, Jewish,
Islamic
National Holiday:
Republic Day, June 2 Literacy rate: 99% (2003 est.) Economic summary: GDP/PPP (2007 est.):
$1.786 trillion; per capita $30,400. Real growth rate: 1.5%.
Inflation: 2%. Unemployment: 6%. Arable land:
26%. Agriculture: fruits, vegetables, grapes, potatoes,
sugar beets, soybeans, grain, olives; beef, dairy products; fish.
Labor force: 24.86 million; services 63%, industry 32%,
agriculture 5% (2001). Industries: tourism, machinery, iron and
steel, chemicals, food processing, textiles, motor vehicles, clothing,
footwear, ceramics. Natural resources: coal, mercury, zinc,
potash, marble, barite, asbestos, pumice, fluorospar, feldspar, pyrite
(sulfur), natural gas and crude oil reserves, fish, arable land.
Exports: $474.8 billion f.o.b. (2007 est.): engineering
products, textiles and clothing, production machinery, motor vehicles,
transport equipment, chemicals; food, beverages and tobacco; minerals,
and nonferrous metals. Imports: $483.6 billion f.o.b. (2007
est.): engineering products, chemicals, transport equipment, energy
products, minerals and nonferrous metals, textiles and clothing; food,
beverages, and tobacco. Major trading partners: Germany,
France, U.S., Spain, UK, Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium, China
(2006). Communications: Telephones:
main lines in use: 25.049 million (2005); mobile cellular: 71.5
million (2005). Radio broadcast stations: AM about 100, FM
about 4,600, shortwave 9 (1998). Television broadcast stations:
358 (plus 4,728 repeaters) (1995). . Internet hosts: 4.117
million (2007). Internet users: 28.855 million (2006). Transportation: Railways: total: 19,460 km
(2006). Highways: total: 484,688 km; paved: 479,688 km
(including 6,621 km of expressways); unpaved: 0 km (2004).
Waterways: 2,400 km; note: used for commercial traffic; of
limited overall value compared to road and rail (2004). Ports and
harbors: Augusta, Genoa, Livorno, Melilli Oil Terminal, Ravenna,
Taranto, Trieste, Venice. Airports: 132 (2007). International disputes: Italy's long
coastline and developed economy entices tens of thousands of illegal
immigrants from southeastern Europe and northern Africa.
Major sources and definitions
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Geography
Italy, slightly larger than Arizona, is a long
peninsula shaped like a boot, surrounded on the west by the Tyrrhenian Sea
and on the east by the Adriatic. It is bounded by France, Switzerland,
Austria, and Slovenia to the north. The Apennine Mountains form the
peninsula's backbone; the Alps form its northern boundary. The largest of
its many northern lakes is Garda (143 sq mi; 370 sq km); the Po, its
principal river, flows from the Alps on Italy's western border and crosses
the Lombard plain to the Adriatic Sea. Several islands form part of Italy;
the largest are Sicily (9,926 sq mi; 25,708 sq km) and Sardinia (9,301 sq
mi; 24,090 sq km).
Government
Republic.
History
The migrations of Indo-European peoples into
Italy probably began about 2000 B.C. and
continued down to 1000 B.C. From about the 9th
century B.C. until it was overthrown by the
Romans in the 3rd century B.C., the Etruscan
civilization dominated the area. By 264 B.C.
all Italy south of Cisalpine Gaul was under the leadership of Rome. For
the next seven centuries, until the barbarian invasions destroyed the
western Roman Empire in the 4th and 5th centuries A.D., the history of Italy is largely the history of
Rome. From 800 on, the Holy Roman Emperors, Roman Catholic popes, Normans,
and Saracens all vied for control over various segments of the Italian
peninsula. Numerous city-states, such as Venice and Genoa, whose political
and commercial rivalries were intense, and many small principalities
flourished in the late Middle Ages. Although Italy remained politically
fragmented for centuries, it became the cultural center of the Western
world from the 13th to the 16th century.
In 1713, after the War of the Spanish
Succession, Milan, Naples, and Sardinia were handed over to the Hapsburgs
of Austria, which lost some of its Italian territories in 1735. After
1800, Italy was unified by Napoléon, who crowned himself king of
Italy in 1805; but with the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Austria once again
became the dominant power in a disunited Italy. Austrian armies crushed
Italian uprisings in 1820–1821 and 1831. In the 1830s, Giuseppe
Mazzini, a brilliant liberal nationalist, organized the Risorgimento
(Resurrection), which laid the foundation for Italian unity. Disappointed
Italian patriots looked to the House of Savoy for leadership. Count
Camille di Cavour (1810–1861), prime minister of Sardinia in 1852
and the architect of a united Italy, joined England and France in the
Crimean War (1853–1856), and in 1859 helped France in a war against
Austria, thereby obtaining Lombardy. By plebiscite in 1860, Modena, Parma,
Tuscany, and the Romagna voted to join Sardinia. In 1860, Giuseppe
Garibaldi conquered Sicily and Naples and turned them over to Sardinia.
Victor Emmanuel II, king of Sardinia, was proclaimed king of Italy in
1861. The annexation of Venetia in 1866 and of papal Rome in 1870 marked
the complete unification of peninsular Italy into one nation under a
constitutional monarchy.
Italy declared its neutrality upon the outbreak
of World War I on the grounds that Germany had embarked upon an offensive
war. In 1915, Italy entered the war on the side of the Allies but obtained
less territory than it expected in the postwar settlement. Benito
(“Il Duce”) Mussolini, a former Socialist, organized
discontented Italians in 1919 into the Fascist Party to “rescue
Italy from Bolshevism.” He led his Black Shirts in a march on Rome
and, on Oct. 28, 1922, became prime minister. He transformed Italy into a
dictatorship, embarking on an expansionist foreign policy with the
invasion and annexation of Ethiopia in 1935 and allying himself with Adolf
Hitler in the Rome-Berlin Axis in 1936. When the Allies invaded Italy in
1943, Mussolini's dictatorship collapsed; he was executed by partisans on
April 28, 1945, at Dongo on Lake Como. Following the armistice with the
Allies (Sept. 3, 1943), Italy joined the war against Germany as a
cobelligerent. A June 1946 plebiscite rejected monarchy and a republic was
proclaimed. The peace treaty of Sept. 15, 1947, required Italian
renunciation of all claims in Ethiopia and Greece and the cession of the
Dodecanese islands to Greece and of five small Alpine areas to France. The
Trieste area west of the new Yugoslav territory was made a free territory
(until 1954, when the city and a 90-square-mile zone were transferred to
Italy and the rest to Yugoslavia).
Italy became an integral member of NATO and the
European Economic Community (later the EU) as it successfully rebuilt its
postwar economy. A prolonged outbreak of terrorist activities by the
left-wing Red Brigades threatened domestic stability in the 1970s, but by
the early 1980s the terrorist groups had been suppressed. “Revolving
door” governments, political instability, scandal, and corruption
characterized Italian politics in the 1980s and 1990s.
Italy adopted the euro as its currency in Jan.
1999. Treasury Secretary Carlo Ciampi, who is credited with the economic
reforms that permitted Italy to enter the European Monetary Union, was
elected president in May 1999. Italy joined its NATO partners in the
Kosovo crisis. Aviano Air Base in northern Italy was a crucial base for
launching air strikes into Kosovo and Yugoslavia.
In June 2001, Silvio Berlusconi, a conservative
billionaire, was sworn in as prime minister. He pledged to reduce
unemployment, cut taxes, revamp the educational system, and reform the
bureaucracy. His critics were alarmed by the apparent conflict of interest
of a prime minister who also owned 90% of Italy's media. He was accused of
Mafia connections and was under indictment for tax fraud and bribery.
Found guilty in three out of four of his trials, he was acquitted in all
of them on appeal. Several other cases are pending.
In Nov. 2002, Giulio Andreotti, who served as
Italy's prime minister numerous times between 1972 and 1992, was sentenced
to 24 years for ordering the Mafia to murder a journalist in 1979. At 84,
however, he was deemed too old for prison.
At the end of 2003, Italian food giant Parmalat
was accused of a massive accounting fraud scheme—$5 billion the
company claimed was in fact nonexistent.
In April 2005, regional elections had disastrous
results for Berlusconi's center-right coalition. The dismal state of the
economy was blamed for the poor showing. In parliamentary elections held
April 2006, the center-left Union coalition led by Romano Prodi won 49.8%
of the vote and Berlusconi's House of Liberties coalition won
49.7%—a mere 25,000 vote difference. Berlusconi refused to concede
and called for a recount. He eventually relented, and Prodi was given the
go-ahead by the newly installed president Giorgio Napolitano to form a
government. Prodi served as prime minister once before (1996–98) and
also as president of the European Union. Prodi's government proved fragile
almost immediately. Indeed, he submitted his resignation in February 2007,
just nine months into his term, after a key foreign-policy vote about the
deployment of troops to Afghanistan and an expansion of a U. S. military
base failed in the Senate. Days later, the Senate, facing the prospect of
Silvio Berlusconi returning to power, narrowly passed a vote of confidence
in Prodi's government. Prodi remained in office, surely to face similar
obstacles in the near future. And he did. In January 2008, the Udeur party
bolted from his coalition, costing Prodi his majority in the senate. He
survived a no-confidence vote in the lower house of parliament, but lost
in the senate, 161 to 156, forcing his government to resign. Parliament
was dissolved, and elections were set for April. Berlusconi saw the crisis
as an opportunity for a political comeback. On April 15, 2008, with help
from Northern League support, Berlusconi and his center-right government
won elections ensuring him a third term as prime minister.
On May 8, 2008, Berlusconi was sworn in for his third term as prime minister and announced his cabinet, which remains dominated by center-right politicians and includes few women.
On July 23, 2008, the Senate and lower chamber
approved a bill that grants immunity to the four most powerful elected
officials while they are in office, including the prime minister, the
president, and the speakers of the two chambers of Parliament.
After two consecutive quarters of negative growth, Italy was declared officially in recession in November 2008.
See also Encyclopedia: Italy. U.S. State Dept. Country Notes:
Italy National Statistical Institute www.istat.it .
Information Please® Database, © 2008 Pearson
Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
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