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the ruling house of Italy from 1861 to 1946

acquired considerable territory in the western Alps where France, Italy, and Switzerland now converge

raised to ducal status within the Holy Roman Empire, and in the 18th century it attained the royal title (first of the kingdom of Sicily, then of Sardinia). Having contributed to the movement for Italian unification, the family became the ruling house of Italy in the mid-19th century and remained so until overthrown with the establishment of the Italian Republic in 1946

The new edition, co-written with Eugenio F. Biagini, Reader in Modern British and European History at the University of Cambridge, covers a much wider range of relevant issues for the unification of Italy. New chapters have been devoted to questions such as the Italian language and the role of women in the process of unification, as well as to a series of relevant issues after 1861, such as the Venetian situation from 1862, and the problem of brigandage in the south once the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies had been annexed by the Kingdom of Sardinia. This much enforces the original project, as a complete unification of Italy had, of course, not yet been reached in 1861. Moreover, Beales's original chapters have been completely overhauled to include recent historical scholarship on the subject. The original set-up of the Historical Problems series has been maintained in this new edition. All the original primary material is reprinted, while the new topics are illustrated by further documents, which now grow from sixteen to twenty-three. A brief chronology of events between 1748 and 1876 has also been added.

Starting with 1870 and the capture of Rome, which was the final stage of the Risorgimento, Italian unification expressed itself culturally, political, and economically in the development of Rome as an important industrial center.

In 1954, Denis Mack Smith, who has died aged 97, produced his first book – and his masterpiece – Cavour and Garibaldi 1860: A Study in Political Conflict. Written with verve and style, it unpicks a crucial year in Italian history, undercutting a series of accepted truths concerning Italy’s unification and, in Jonathan Steinberg’s words, telling Italians “what they did not want to hear”.

Denis was a rarity, a true populariser of history, who wrote in a clear, readable and engaging style. His writing was full of quotable lines. He wrote of Cavour that he had “managed to persuade people to back a revolution on the excuse that this was the way to prevent a revolution”.

In 1949, Denis met one of Garibaldi’s daughters in Rome, and she invited him to visit the family home on the island in Caprera. He later said that it was one of the great regrets of his life that he had not been able to do so.