stylistic:tone
Problems

Unification was achieved entirely in terms of Piedmont's interests. Martin Clark says, "It was Piedmontization all around." Cavour died unexpectedly in June 1861, at 50, and most of the many promises that he made to regional authorities to induce them to join the newly unified Italian kingdom were ignored. The new Kingdom of Italy was structured by renaming the old Kingdom of Sardinia and annexing all the new provinces into its structures. The first king was Victor Emmanuel II, who kept his old title.

National and regional officials were all appointed by Piedmont. A few regional leaders succeeded to high positions in the new national government, but the top bureaucratic and military officials were mostly Piedmontese. The national capital was briefly moved to Florence and finally to Rome, one of the cases of Piedmont losing out.

However, Piedmontese tax rates and regulations, diplomats and officials were imposed on all of Italy. The constitution was Piedmont's old constitution. The document was generally liberal and was welcomed by liberal elements. However, its anticlerical provisions were resented in the pro-clerical regions in places such as around Venice, Rome, and Naples—as well as the island of Sicily. Cavour had promised there would be regional and municipal, local governments, but all the promises were broken in 1861.

The first decade of the kingdom saw savage insurrections in Sicily and in the Naples region. Hearder claimed that failed efforts to protest unification involved "a mixture of spontaneous peasant movement and a Bourbon-clerical reaction directed by the old authorities".

The pope lost Rome in 1870 and ordered the Catholic Church not to co-operate with the new government, a decision fully reversed only in 1929. Most people for Risorgimento had wanted strong provinces, but they got a strong central state instead. The inevitable long-run results were a severe weakness of national unity and a politicized system based on mutually hostile regional violence. Such factors remain in the 21st century.