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Italy's great power strength includes a vast advanced economy [15] [16] (in terms of national wealth, net wealth per capita and national GDP), a strong manufacturing industry (ranking 7th on the list of countries by manufacturing output), [17] a large luxury goods market, [18] a large national budget and the third largest gold reserve in the world.
Italy took the initiative in entering the war in spring 1915, despite strong popular and elite sentiment in favor of neutrality. Italy was a large, poor country whose political system was chaotic, its finances were heavily strained, and its army was very poorly prepared. [167] The Triple Alliance meant little either to Italians or Austrians.
The military history of Italy chronicles a vast time period, lasting from the military conflicts fought by the ancient peoples of Italy, most notably the conquest of the Mediterranean world by the ancient Romans, through the expansion of the Italian city-states and maritime republics during the medieval period and the involvement of the historical Italian states in the Italian Wars and the ...
The affirmation of French power in Italy around 1494 brought Austria and Spain to join an anti-French league that formed the "Habsburg ring" around France (Low Countries, Aragon, Castile, Empire) via dynastic marriages that eventually led to the large inheritance of Charles V. [87] On the other hand, the last Italian war ended with the division ...
However, the British Prime Minister Churchill and John Foster Dulles were resolutely against the idea, and so Italy's new government was left out of the Conference. Italy and Japan negotiated the resumption of their respective diplomatic ties after 1951, and later signed several bilateral agreements and treaties. [105]
In the 14th century, just as the Italian Renaissance was beginning, Italy was the economic capital of Western Europe: the Italian States were the top manufacturers of finished woolen products. With the Bubonic Plague in 1348, the birth of the English woolen industry, and general warfare, Italy temporarily lost its economic advantage. By the ...
Another British historian, Mark Axworthy, believes that Romania could even be considered to have had the second most important Axis army of Europe, even more so than that of Italy. [106] Under Antonescu Romania was a fascist dictatorship and a totalitarian state.
As Spain declined in the 16th century, so did its Italian possessions in Naples, Sicily, Sardinia, and Milan. Southern Italy was impoverished, stagnant, and cut off from the mainstream of events in Europe. Naples was one of the continent's most overcrowded and unsanitary cities, with a crime-ridden and volatile populace. [16]