<P> Italian unification (Italian: Unità d'Italia (uniˈta ddiˈtaːlja)), or the Risorgimento ((risordʒiˈmento), meaning "the Resurgence" or "revival"), was the political and social movement that consolidated different states of the Italian peninsula into the single state of the Kingdom of Italy in the 19th century . The process began in 1815 with the Congress of Vienna and was completed in 1871 when Rome became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy . </P> <P> The term, which also designates the cultural, political and social movement that promoted unification, recalls the romantic, nationalist and patriotic ideals of an Italian renaissance through the conquest of a unified political identity that, by sinking its ancient roots during the Roman period, "suffered an abrupt halt (of loss) of its political unity in 476 AD after the collapse of the West Roman Empire ." </P> <P> However, some of the terre irredente did not join the Kingdom of Italy until 1918 after Italy defeated Austria - Hungary in World War I. Some nationalists see the 4 November 1918 Armistice of Villa Giusti as the completion of unification . </P> <P> Italy was unified by Rome in III century BC. and for seven hundred years constituted a kind of territorial extension of the capital of the Roman Republic and Empire, enjoying, for a long time, a privileged status (for that reason it was not converted into a province like all conquered territories). </P>

Who united italy first in the 19th century