Etrurian First Republic
United Etrurian Republic Repubblica Etruriana Unita Velika Etrurijanska Republika Združena Etrurijanska Republika | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1889-1938 | |||||||||
| Motto: Per Dio e il Paese "For God and Country" | |||||||||
| Anthem: Canzone dei Tre Popoli "Song of the Three Peoples" | |||||||||
| Location of Etruria in Euclea Location of Etruria in Euclea | |||||||||
| Etruria and colonies Colonial-puppet administrations Etruria and colonies Colonial-puppet administrations | |||||||||
| Capital | |||||||||
| Government | |||||||||
| President | |||||||||
• 1917-1923 | Alessandro Luzzani | ||||||||
• 1923-1926 | Guilio Augustino Schiattarella | ||||||||
• 1926-1927 | Vittore De Rossi | ||||||||
• 1927-1927 | Aurelio Cesare Tozzo | ||||||||
• 1927-1934 | Fortunato Parlatore | ||||||||
• 1934-1936 | Marco Antonio Ercolani | ||||||||
| Vice President | |||||||||
• 1917-1923 | Arminio Tagliafico | ||||||||
• 1923-1926 | Vittore De Rossi | ||||||||
• 1926-1927 | Alessandro Abate | ||||||||
• 1927-1927 | Fortunato Parlatore | ||||||||
• 1927-1934 | Luigi Crosetta | ||||||||
• 1934-1936 | Ettore Caviglia | ||||||||
| Legislature | Etrurian Senate | ||||||||
| Assembly of the States | |||||||||
| Assembly of the People | |||||||||
| History | |||||||||
| 3 May 1889 | |||||||||
| 10 April 1938 | |||||||||
| April 1 1938 | |||||||||
| Population | |||||||||
• 1918 | 32,448,603 | ||||||||
• 1928 | 36,994,311 | ||||||||
• 1938 | 39,855,922 (not including colonies) | ||||||||
| Currency | Scutato | ||||||||
| |||||||||
| Today part of |  EtruriaTemplate:Country data Denikert Template:Country data Sarenia | ||||||||
The United Etrurian Republic (Vespasian:Repubblica Etruriana Unita; Novalian: Velika Etrurijanska Republika; Carinthian: Združena Etrurijanska Republika), also known as the First Etrurian Republic, which is an unofficial, historical designation for the Etrurian state during the years 1889 to 1938. The name is derived from being the first of a series of democratically elected-systems operated in Etrurian history.
The First Republic was founded after the Constituent Assembly produced a new constitution for the Etrurian State 3 May 1889, four months after the Etrurian Revolution, which overthrew the Kingdom of Etruria. In its forty-nine years, the First Republic faced numerous problems, including hyperinflation, political extremism in its later years (with paramilitaries—both left- and right-wing), maintaining law and order in wake of strikes and worker discontentment and engaging in the Great War. However, from its formation until the early 1920s, it was able to stabilise the economy and benefit from its early radicalism, such as the granting of universal suffrage to men and women over the age of 24 in 1913, embracing and protecting freedom of speech and a free press and its successful reforms of the economy. The 1920s until the outbreak of the Great War saw immense economic development, cultural successes and a general feeling of a positivity and optimism.
However, these gains were undermined by successive short-lived governments, usually brought down by small majorities and de-centralised and highly factional party politics. The Republic was further undermined by the strains of the Great War, with Etruria forced to fight the world's first industrialised war on three-fronts, while engaging in colonial conflicts, especially in Bahia. While the war succeeded in forming the Etrurian national identity, it deepened the divides and rifts within society, caused immense socio-political upheaval, and despite being on the victorious side and suffering almost 700,000 war dead, Etruria failed to secure a vast majority of its territorial aims, which came to be known as the Grande Tradimento (Great Betrayal). In wake of the diplomatic failure to secure Etrurian gains, with the exception being Tarpeia and an end to Floren claims to the Tinian March, mass riots and often outright lawlessness ensued as the army was de-mobilised. Within weeks of the war's end, the First Republic was forced to embrace a military government with a powerless civilian figurehead.
Democracy was slowly eroded as the military government propagated nationalism, irredentism and the Great Betrayal. The allied failure in the Sarenian Crisis was swiftly blamed on the Republican system and on April 1 1938, the Etrurian military stormed the parliament based in the Palazzo Orsini, executing the entire legislature. On April 10, the military repealed the Constitution and replaced it with the Capitoline Statute, a new constitution that turned Etruria into a single-party totalitarian military dictatorship overnight, officially bringing the First Republic to an end.
Background
The First Republic first found its initial political roots in the National League for Liberty, a secret-society of liberal aristocrats from 1860 until 1890. It eventually grew to become a nationwide movement that encompassed numerous factions and ideologies, that united around the pursuit of a constitutional monarchy and an elected and powerful legislature under the monarch. The League was led by Rodoflo Grasci, a prominent industrialist and liberal thinker. Between 1860 and 1864 he called for reform, and worked tirelessly to protect the League from more extremist elements that were advocating revolution to overthrow the House of Della Rovere.
In 1864, Grasci was appointed Prime Minister under Guilio Vittorio III. Working alongside Guilio Vittorio III, Grasci dramatically expanded the powers and responsibilities of the unicameral Senate of Etruria, drawing influence away from the Royal Advisory Council, a body tasked with advising with the King on political and economic matters. The RAC had since its creation in 1742, been dominated by the Piccoli Principi (Little Princes), the landed aristocratic class. The RAC under Guilio Vittorio III, saw Grasci and the NLL as a significant threat to their monopoly of power, and rallied allies and colleagues in the Senate to oppose his government.
Grasci was sacked by King Guilio Vittorio IV who saw his father's reforms as "foolhardy and naive". He was succeeded by Count Alessandro Vineiro, who worked to repeal many of the reforms that empowered the senate, however, Vineiro sought to do so in the aim of entrenching the the Piccoli Principi-dominated Solarian National Party in government. In 1874, Vineiro's government passed the "Responsible Government Act", which mandated that all senior offices of state and positions within the Army should be held by a landed aristocrat. This emboldened the NLL to reform itself into a formal political party. By 1880, the SNP government had rejected over 200 bills aimed at expanding suffrage to the middle-class, while NLL politicians were regularly smeared and harassed by the Piccoli Principi owned press. However, the 1880s began to see the decline of the economic power of the Piccoli Principi as NLL-aligned businessmen and industrialists established factories and industries, undermining the agrarian-focused nature of the economy and with it, the financial base of the ruling aristocrats.
Acknowledging their impending financial crisis, the SNP-government with the backing of King Guilio Vittorio IV, hindered the growth of industry. To further aid this effort, in 1883 the SNP began to exacerbate the social tensions over industrialisation, by offering prominent positions to traditionalists and agrarian land-owners. One side-effect of this decision was the decline in working conditions for established urban-industrial workers as the government sought to overtax urban workers. This division between the landed-elite and the rising industrial-elite eventually resulted in a marriage-of-convenience between the "Industriali" and nascent socialist movement, who both opposed the high taxes and anti-industrial policies of the SNP government. On April 5 1889, a steel-worker in Asano-Terni shot dead a visiting SNP politician, prompting King Guilio Vittorio IV to form Costita, a secret police dedicated to fighting the far-left's rise within Etruria's cities.
In 1890, Vineiro retired from politics and was succeeded by Giovanni Aldrovandini as Prime Minister. The new prime minister was a descendant of the wealthy and powerful Poveglian merchant family. Aldrovandini had suffered significant financial losses as hundreds of land-workers on his estates migrated to the cities in search of industrial jobs. He sought to preserve what remained of the landed-economy, by introducing travel bans on peasants in 1891, which meant that would-be migrants required permission from their employers to move to the cities. This set-in motion the emergence of the socialist movement as a political threat to the status-quo and by the 1890s, provoked the often violent response to declining standards in the rural regions.
Great Collapse and deepening tensions
By the turn of the 20th century, Etruria was facing simmering tensions between the landed-monarchist government and the rapidly growing republican middle-class and socialist working-class. The government of Giovanni Aldrovandini had by 1899 become deeply unpopular, owing to its decision in 1891 to require peasants gaining permission from their landed employers to migrate to the cities. This law had resulted in declining agricultural output as many would-be migrants laid down their tools or simply fled in secret. With agriculture being the primary base of the national economy, Etruria's economy began to stall. In 1902, Aldrovandini was sacked by King Guilio Adriano I, who ascended to the throne the previous year. Aldrovandini was succeeded by Guiliano Mastrantonio, the latter soon sought to loosen the restrictions on rural-to-urban migration while seeking to find a common solution with the National League for Liberty.
On November 12 1902, Mastrantonio was shot dead by a radical socialist while visiting a newly opened hospital. He was succeeded by Paolo Augusto Capra, who rejected Mastrantonio's previous efforts to end the political impasse. In 1903, Capra's government succeeded in establishing the General High Court, which essentially established a two-tier justice system, one for the Piccoli Principi and another for the rest of the population. Then in 1904, his government reformed the electoral system, which granted suffrage to literate males aged 30 and above, but granted the Piccoli Principi a weighted vote, this led the SNP returning to government with a small majority in the 1905 election. However, the majority was endangered by a series of assassinations in what became the Year of Blood and Iron. Throughout 1906, over 22 SNP politicians would be killed by a series of radical leftist groups. This in turn was met by violent crackdowns by the Costita, by 1907 the SNP only had a majority of 5 and violent street battles between leftists and the authorities had become the norm. While the radical left often pursued violent means to pressure the government, the liberal NLL reformed itself into the Democratic League and sought to bring change by ending the SNP's dominance of politics.
