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 (predecessor state of Italy). 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. The chronology of the development of foreign domination in Italy is the following:


 * Treaties of Cateau-Cambresis (1559): Northern Italy (the Kingdom of Italy in the HRE) under sovereignty of the Austrian Habsburgs as imperial fiefs; Southern Italy (the Mezzogiorno) under the Spanish Habsburgs as viceroyalties; House of Savoy settles in Piedmont.
 * Wars of successions in Europe (early 18th century): The north passes to direct rule of the Austrian Empire of the Habsburg-Lorraine; the south (Two Sicilies) passes to a cadet branch of the Spanish Bourbons; Piedmont acquires Sardinia and forms the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia.
 * Congress of Vienna (1815) declares Italy a "geographic expression"
 * French intervention in Rome (1849): French garrison established in the Papal states.