The Perfect Fusion ( it, Fusione perfetta) was the 1847 act of the Savoyard king

Charles Albert of Sardinia Charles Albert (; 2 October 1798 – 28 July 1849) was the King of Sardinia from 27 April 1831 until 23 March 1849. His name is bound up with the first Italian constitution, the Albertine Statute, and with the First Italian War of Independence ...

which abolished the administrative differences between the mainland states (

Savoy Savoy (; frp, Savouè ; french: Savoie ) is a cultural-historical region in the Western Alps. Situated on the cultural boundary between Occitania and Piedmont, the area extends from Lake Geneva in the north to the Dauphiné in the south. Savo ...

and Piedmont) and the island of Sardinia, in a fashion similar to the

Nueva Planta decrees The Nueva Planta decrees ( es, link=no, Decretos de Nueva Planta, ca, Decrets de Nova Planta, en, link=no, "Decrees of the New Plant") were a number of decrees signed between 1707 and 1716 by Philip V, the first Bourbon King of Spain, during ...

between the

Crown of Castile The Crown of Castile was a medieval polity in the Iberian Peninsula that formed in 1230 as a result of the third and definitive union of the crowns and, some decades later, the parliaments of the kingdoms of Castile and León upon the accessi ...

and the realms of the Crown of Aragon between 1707 and 1716 and the Acts of Union between Great Britain and Ireland in 1800. The once Iberian Kingdom of Sardinia had become a possession of the House of Savoy in 1720, and it had continued to be ruled as during the ages of the Spanish Empire. Although the Sardinian populace had been showing hostility against the new Piedmontese rulers since the failed insurrection in 1794, the island's separate status from the Mainland became a problem for the local notables from two major cities of

Cagliari Cagliari (, also , , ; sc, Casteddu ; lat, Caralis) is an Italian municipality and the capital of the island of Sardinia, an autonomous region of Italy. Cagliari's Sardinian name ''Casteddu'' means ''castle''. It has about 155,000 inhabitant ...

and

Sassari Sassari (, ; sdc, Sàssari ; sc, Tàtari, ) is an Italian city and the second-largest of Sardinia in terms of population with 127,525 inhabitants, and a Functional Urban Area of about 260,000 inhabitants. One of the oldest cities on the island, ...

when liberal reforms began to be put in force in Turin, and some of them started to see their own legal system as a handicap more than a privilege; a minority of other Sardinian notables, like Giovanni Battista Tuveri and Federico Fenu, were not in favour of the idea, fearing that further moves toward the centralisation of the Savoy-led Kingdom might have followed thereafter. King Charles Albert eventually solved the problem by transforming all his dominions into a single, centralized state. A new legal system entered into force in Sardinia, and the last viceroy,

Claudio Gabriele de Launay Claudio Gabriele de Launay (6 October 1786 – 21 February 1850) was prime minister of the Kingdom of Sardinia from 27 March to 7 May 1849. Previously he had been the last Viceroy of Sardinia This is a list of viceroys of Sardinia. Aragone ...

, left Cagliari on 4 March 1848. The island was divided into three provinces ruled by their prefects, following the system already used in Piedmont since 1815. The ultimate goal of the unionist movement was assimilationist, for it set about, in the words of the Pietro Martini, "to transplant, without any reserves and obstacles, the culture and civilization of the Italian Mainland to Sardinia, and thereby form a single civil family under a Father better than a King, the great Charles Albert". Moreover, the fusion was supposed to spur commercial development in Sardinia and, by 1861, according to William S. Craig (then British consul-general at Cagliari), increase the Kingdom's importance; however, the kingdom's insular part lost what little autonomy it had previously had in the process, as well as its historical title of "nation", as it had been referred to for centuries, and illustrated by the Kingdom's national anthem; in this regard, the Fusion provoked a shift in terminology, with references to "Italy" replacing "Sardinia" instead. On the whole, the island became an even more marginal part of the Savoyard Kingdom, raising the so-called " Sardinian Question" pertaining to its difficult process of integration within a single national body: more specifically, Sardinians lost their former powers of taxation and autonomous representation in exchange for the Piedmontese parliament taking over legislative responsibility on the island, and some seats in the Congress. Most of the Sardinian unionists, including its leader Giovanni Siotto Pintor, would later come to regret it. The Fusion would not be able to improve the condition of the Sardinian notables, either: on the contrary, Sardinia's fusion into an Italian unitary state provoked, as a response, a marked increase in banditry and criminal activities against the central authorities.«L'entrata dell'isola in un grande Stato unificato non ha dato grandi vantaggi ai ceti dirigenti sardi. Anzi, ha provocato una recrudescenza delle attività delittuose e del banditismo, che affermano in maniera clamorosa - più ancora della mafia siciliana, che tutto sommato prospera su dei compromessi con il sistema statale - il rifiuto totale di entrare in dialettica con l'esterno.»

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* * * * * * * * * * * * * * {{cite book, title= La Sardegna e i sardi nel tempo, first= Omar, last= Onnis, year=2015, place=Cagliari, publisher=Arkadia History of Sardinia House of Savoy Kingdom of Sardinia 1847 in the Kingdom of Sardinia 1847 in law

See also

References

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