Foreign domination


Foreign domination is a term used in the historiography of multiple countries to characterize successive periods of rule by foreign powers. The term has notably been used to refer to periods of Italian, Israeli, Eastern European and Polish history.

Italy

Foreign domination is commonly used to describe the condition of foreign rule over Italian states at the beginning of the Risorgimento, when the only state left under local Italian rule was Piedmont-Sardinia. All of Italy was organised in independent states from the 11th-12th century as a result of the Walk to Canossa and the Treaty of Venice, but this condition was lost between the end of the Italian Wars and the balance of power established by the Congress of Vienna. The last Italian area to lose its independence was the Papal States, when it became a protectorate of Napoleon III.