Pre-Unification

The Apennine peninsula and neighboring islands were composed of several independent duchies, small republics and city states in the early 1800s. It wasn’t until about 1861 that they were conquered by troops from the Kingdom of Sardinia – and Piedmont – led by Giuseppe Garibaldi that they were merged together into one nation, a kingdom belonging to the House of Savoy-Carignano – the nation of Italia, known as Italy to English speaking people.

Throughout this album and the subsequent ones, I mention many times some historical facts about Italy. First, that it was not a country until the 1860s. Previously, it was several separate kingdoms, duchies, minor republics, and city states. Since stamps weren’t in use in the world until the 1850s and 1860s, there weren’t many issued by these ancient states.

In the left margin are links to the album pages for each of these states that issued stamps. If you click on the image here to enlarge it, you can see a map showing where these states were located, as well as the general path Garibaldi took when he conquered them. It’s worth familiarizing yourself with this map and the names of these states. I’ll refer to them many times in the descriptions of the pages for all three albums in this collection – plus, these factors and locations will be referenced many times on the stamps in this collection, spanning one-hundred seventy-five years.

Note

This is stamp album, which covers the Italian states prior to the formation of the country of Italy, is still being developed. Since I had to research which stamps were issued by these states, and then design the album pages in Adobe Photoshop – I can’t get them from ‘Leuchtturm – I continue to make changes to the database and to the album pages.

Additionally, none of these stamps are cheap. They all cost at least twenty-five euros each, in unused condition. Some of them cost over a hundred euros. Plus, they’re not easy to find. As a result, it’s a slow process for me to complete these album pages.

remaining stamps & stories in sub-album

page	story	note	used	need

Vittorio Emanuele III	✓	✓	1	6
Red Cross	✓	✓	3	3
Vittorio Vento	✓	✓	2	5
Sibyl	✓	✓	3	12
Legionnaires	✓	✓	1	5
Italian Minaret				7
Fourth Shore		✓
Naples Fair	✓	✓	2	3
Ostrich	✓	✓		13
Life in Libia				14
Pomegranate
Arch of Philaeni	✓	✓		2
Private	✓	✓		1
Postage Due	✓	✓		13
Express	✓	✓		1
Parcel Post	✓	✓		2