The article gives the impression "Italy" was always a nation in the making for all of history, just waiting to "unify". It talks of a "national rebirth".

But it's an invention. It never previously existed. Yes the penisula was referred to as Italy for a long time and the language is shared across the area and there are cultural similarities. But none of that automatically makes a nation - you don't have to think hard of counter examples. History could have panned out differently. It still could.

I think the bourgeoisies have been enormously successful in giving the impression that these nation states, whether it be Italy or Germany, or India, etc, that they're inevitable, they're permanent and anything else is a perversion. And Garibaldi was one such whose brilliance was to forge a nation so quickly from so many disparate states.