• palebluethought@lemmy.world
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      18 hours ago

      Sicily (which would include the south end of the boot) would probably have the same label if it weren’t less funny that way. They were all distinct kingdoms and cultures for most of their history. the modern unified Italian identity is quite young by European standards, about as old as the US civil war

      • lugal@lemmy.world
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        15 hours ago

        Isn’t that technically true about all of Italy?

        I mean, it’s the same with Germany and we joke about how Bavaria isn’t really part of Germany so I don’t disagree with you

        • palebluethought@lemmy.world
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          14 hours ago

          Yeah, but the northern part of the peninsula is broadly more culturally uniform than Sicily and Sardinia, and while the exact borders fluctuated a lot and was mainly made of city-states for a long time, there had been past kingdoms that unified the North peninsula much more recently than either of those two regions. “Italy” as a term really only referred to the northern peninsula, for the most part, for well over a thousand years.