Aftermath and unfinished business: the Southern Question, the Roman Question, and the Kulturkampf

Unification left both new states with unresolved internal conflicts that would outlast the nineteenth century. In Italy, the loss of Rome produced the "Roman Question": Pope Pius IX rejected the unilateral Law of Guarantees of May 1871 and declared himself a voluntary "prisoner of the Vatican," refusing to recognize the Kingdom of Italy and forbidding practicing Catholics from voting in its elections — a dispute not resolved until the Lateran Pacts of 1929. At the same time, the rapid, largely unadapted extension of Piedmontese law, taxation, and conscription to the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies fed the "Southern Question" and the armed resistance known as brigantaggio, suppressed between 1861 and roughly 1865 by tens of thousands of Italian troops under the exceptional emergency measures of the 1863 Pica Law.