William Cody
3/4/2015

History Essay
During the 19th century while enlightenment ideas and old conservative thinkers were colliding an Italian general and politician by the name of Giuseppe Garibaldi had arose.Also during this time period the idea of Marxism had arose. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels the founders of Marxism had thought that the major aspect of history was class struggle. Thus Marx and Engels believed that one day there should be a society where there were no classes.
Garibaldi was not a follower of Marxism, because he did not believe that class struggle was the necessary aspect to a unsuccessful government. Garibaldi was a more classical conservative thinker when it came to politics. Three governmental ideas that had showed the differences between the practice of Marxism and Garibaldi were Imperialism, Nationalism, and the exploitation of labor. Marxist beliefs on these three aspects were that all three were unnecessary other than nationalism which Marxists thought was only good if done for the people. Garibaldi however being more conservative had very similar beliefs and opinions. Imperialistically
Garibaldi was not interested, he had fought for the consolidation of Italy without any foreign influence. In terms of nationalism he had united southern Italy and had even become a national hero. Garibaldi also was strongly against the exploitation of labor and had worked to protect the rights of laborers.
In the 19th century internal stability and technological advances of the Industrial revolution had allowed imperialistic ideas to become present among much of Europe.
This was especially seen in Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands. However Garibaldi was

able to prevent his homeland Italy to become influenced by these imperialistic ideas.
Through out much of the 19th century Italy had been controlled by France. Many small
Nationalist groups encouraged by revolutions all among Europe at the time had tried to revolt against this French dominance but they were easily handle by the Italian rulers.
However this had started the Italian unification movement lead by Giuseppe Garibaldi.
Garibaldi led the Red Shirts a group of guerrilla fighters into Italy. He was a supporter of a republic but had conceded to a monarchy. He took his forces into southern Italy and successfully conquered Naples and the two Sicilies. Cavour who was the prime minister
Piedmont­Sardinia and served King Victor Emmanuel II had sent troops to southern Italy to stop Garibaldi from invading Rome, which was occupied by French troops, but both sides met in Naples and surprisingly became allies. In 1861, the Kingdom of Italy was declared with Piedmont's Victor Emmanuel as king. Thus Garibaldi was able to expel the outside force of France out of Italy without outside force. . However, Italy's agrarian south and industrial north had difficulty uniting, and the unification was not complete until 1870. Garibaldi’s later plans for Italy was only to Unify all of it and nothing more showing the the anti­imperialist inside of him. This idea would completely agree the ideas of Marxism, however Marxists never directly addressed the issue of Imperialism, but they did how ever look and examine the economic disadvantages of Imperialism.
Therefore Karl Marx and the rest of the Marxists would agree with Garibaldi’s decision for not wanting outside forces interfering with his country and For Garibaldi not wanting to take over anymore land.

However Giuseppe Garibaldi could be considered a Nationalist. Much of
Garibaldi's actions were for the greater good of the country. One major instance of this was
Garibaldi uniting southern Italy. The eventual unification of Italy took more than a decade.
Garibaldi made several attempts to seize Rome and other parts of Italy in the mid­1860s, and was captured three times and sent back to his farm.How ever in the Franco­Prussian War, Garibaldi, out of sympathy for the newly