After unification: Ticino, Italy and the new exiles, 1861–1914

A neighbour that was no longer a threat

The proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861 changed the position of Ticino fundamentally. Lombardy had passed from Austria to Piedmont in 1859, and from then on the canton bordered a liberal constitutional monarchy that guaranteed the freedom of the press and that most of the old exiles regarded as the fulfilment, or at least the beginning, of their cause. Many returned home. Those who stayed, like Cattaneo, did so out of political conviction or personal attachment. They could now travel freely between Lugano and Milan. The presses of Capolago and Lugano had lost their raison d'être even before unification, as the earlier sections showed. The refuge for Italian patriots came to an end because Italy itself had become the refuge.

The new relationship was settled in several steps. In 1859 the Federal Assembly decreed the separation of Ticino from the diocese of Como and the archdiocese of Milan, ending the jurisdiction of Italian bishops over Ticinese parishes, a long-standing point of friction with Austria and with the Church.¹ The practical implementation took decades. A convention of 1 September 1884 between the Holy See and the Federal Council separated Ticino canonically from Como and Milan and placed it provisionally under an apostolic administrator, and the bull Ad universam of Leo XIII of 7 September 1888 created the diocese of Lugano.² In the economic field the decisive project was the Gotthard railway, for which Italy pledged 45 million francs in the Bern convention of October 1869, against 20 million each from Switzerland and Germany.³ Chapter C.III treats the railway and its financing. Here it suffices to note that the new Italian state, once a source of political danger, became a partner and a cofinancier of the canton's infrastructure.

Bakunin, the anarchists and the second refuge

As the patriots left, a new kind of exile arrived. From the late 1860s Lugano and Locarno attracted revolutionaries of the international socialist and anarchist movements, for whom the Kingdom of Italy was an oppressor and Switzerland a refuge. Mikhail Bakunin arrived in Lugano on 1 November 1869 and lived in the Locarno area, at Muralto and Orselina, until 30 April 1872. He returned later, bought a villa at Besso near Lugano on 5 March 1875 and died in Bern on 1 July 1876.⁴ The Italian anarchist Carlo Cafiero bought the property of La Baronata near Minusio in August 1873 as a base for the movement. The French geographer Élisée Reclus lived in Lugano from April 1872 to the end of July 1874. The Communards Arthur Arnould and Paul Guérin settled there in the autumn of 1874.⁵

The anarchist colony of the 1870s published its own newspapers, L'Agitatore, of which six issues appeared between 20 August and 20 October 1875, and an Almanacco del proletario (1876). A "Sezione del Ceresio" of the International was formed on 20 November 1875. Andrea Costa began in Lugano, on 27 July 1879, the Lettera agli amici di Romagna that announced his turn from anarchism towards parliamentary socialism. A congress at Chiasso on 5 and 6 December 1880, meant to reorganize the Federation of Upper Italy, turned into a heated dispute between anarchists and socialists, while the congress at Capolago from 4 to 6 January 1891 reorganized the socialist-anarchist-revolutionary movement.⁶ The authorities watched closely. Errico Malatesta was arrested on 21 February 1881 and expelled. Cafiero was arrested in September of the same year.⁷ The Federal Council left Bakunin himself unmolested apart from constant surveillance, while it expelled others without extraditing them.⁸

Notes

1. Moos, "Italien" (above): "Die Bundesversammlung [verfügte] 1859 die Trennung des Kantons Tessin von der Diözese Como und der Erzdiözese Mailand." ↩
2. Wikipedia, "Roman Catholic Diocese of Lugano", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic_Diocese_of_Lugano (consulted 5 October 2026), used here as a last resort, on "the convention of 1 September 1884, made between the Curia and the Federal Council" and the bull "'Ad universam' of Leo XIII (7 September 1888)". ↩
3. Caizzi, "La fine di una tormentata vicenda ferroviaria" (above). ↩
4. Broggini, "Nuovi esuli nel Ticino", Scuola ticinese no. 102, PDF, https://m4.ti.ch/fileadmin/DECS/DS/Rivista_scuola_ticinese/ST_n.102/ ST_102_Broggini_nuovi_esuli_nel_Ticino.pdf (consulted 4 October 2026). The PDF gives the author's surname only. ↩
5. Broggini, "Nuovi esuli nel Ticino" (above). ↩
6. Broggini, "Nuovi esuli nel Ticino" (above), on Costa, "che proprio da Lugano, il 27.VII.1879, iniziò quella Lettera agli amici di Romagna che annunzia un nuovo orientamento politico", on the Chiasso congress, which "avrebbe dovuto riorganizzare la Federazione dell'Alta Italia e si risolse in un vivace contraddittorio fra anarchici e socialisti", and on the Capolago congress, "che riorganizzò il movimento «socialista-anarchico-rivoluzionario»". ↩
7. Broggini, "Nuovi esuli nel Ticino" (above). ↩
8. Portmann-Tinguely and von Cranach, "Flüchtlinge" (above). ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of August 2025.