Italy's politics after unification had favored radical socialism due to a regionally fragmented right, as conservative Prime Minister Marco Minghetti has only held on to power by enacting revolutionary and socialist-leaning policies to appease the opposition such as the nationalization of railways.

In 1876, Minghetti is ousted and replaced by socialist Agostino Depretis, who begins the long Socialist Period, marked by corruption, government instability, poverty, and use of authoritarian measures by the Italian government.

Depretis begins his term as Prime Minister by initiating an experimental political idea called Trasformismo (transformism).

The theory of trasformismo is that a cabinet should select a variety of moderates and capable politicians from a non-partisan perspective.

In practice, trasformismo is authoritarian and corrupt.

Depretis had pressured districts to vote for his candidates if they wished to gain favorable concessions from Depretis when in power.

The results of the 1876 election result in only four representatives from the right being elected, allowing the government to be dominated by Depretis.

Despotic and corrupt actions are believed to be the key means in which Depretis manages to keep support in southern Italy.

Depretis puts through authoritarian measures, such as the of banning public meetings, placing "dangerous" individuals in internal exile on remote penal islands across Italy, and adopting militarist policies.

Depretis enacts controversial legislation for the time, such as abolishing arrest for debt, making elementary education free and compulsory while ending compulsory religious teaching in elementary schools.

The first government of Agostino Depretis collapses after his dismissal of his Interior Minister, and ends with his resignation in 1877.

Umberto I of Italy is attacked with a dagger by an anarchist, Giovanni Passannante, during a parade in Naples on November 17, 1878, while on a tour of the kingdom, accompanied by Queen Margherita and the Prime Minister Benedetto Cairoli.

The King wards off the blow with his saber, but Cairoli, in attempting to defend him, is severely wounded in the thigh.

The would-be assassin is condemned to death, even though the law only allows the death penalty if the King is killed.

The King commutes the sentence to one of penal servitude for life, which is served in a cell only one point four meters high, without sanitation and with eighteen kilograms of chains.

Passanante will later die in a psychiatric institution.

Umberto, the son of Victor Emmanuel II and Archduchess Adelaide of Austria, was born in Turin, which was then capital of the kingdom of Sardinia, on March 14, 1844, his father's twenty-fourth birthday.

His education had been entrusted to, among others, Massimo Taparelli, marquis d'Azeglio and Pasquale Stanislao Mancini.

From March 1858, he had had a military career in the Sardinian army, beginning with the rank of captain.

Umberto had taken part in the Italian Wars of Independence: he had been present at the battle of Solferino in 1859, and in 1866 had commanded the XVI Division at the Villafranca battle that had followed the Italian defeat at Custoza.

Because of the upheaval the Savoys had caused to a number of other royal houses (all the Italian ones, and those related closely with them, such as the Bourbons of Spain and France) in 1859–60, only a minority of royal families in the 1860s were willing to establish relations with the newly founded Italian royal family.

It had proved difficult to find any royal bride for either of the sons of king Victor Emmanuel II. (His younger son Amedeo, Umberto's brother, had ultimately married a Piedmontese subject, princess Vittoria of Cisterna.)

Their conflict with the papacy has not helped these matters.

Not many eligible Catholic royal brides were easily available for young Umberto.

At first, Umberto was to marry Archduchess Mathilde of Austria, a scion of a remote sideline of the Austrian imperial house; however, she died as the result of an accident at the age of 18.

On April 21, 1868, Umberto had married his first cousin, Margherita Teresa Giovanna, Princess of Savoy.

Their only son is Victor Emmanuel, prince of Naples.

She was one of the rare young ladies of any royal house available to the despised Savoy royal family in that decade—being a Savoy herself.

Ascending the throne on the death of his father January 9, 1878, he had adopted the title "Umberto I of Italy" rather than "Umberto IV" (of Savoy), and had consented that the remains of his father should be interred at Rome in the Pantheon, rather than the royal mausoleum of Basilica of Superga.

The second government of Agostino Depretis starts in 1881.

Depretis' goals include widening suffrage in 1882 and increasing the tax intake from Italians by expanding the minimum requirements of who can pay taxes and the creation of a new electoral system, which will result in large numbers of inexperienced deputies in the Italian parliament.

Francesco Crispi, a cabinet minister of Agostino Depretis and former Garibaldi republican, becomes Prime Minister when Depretis is finally pushed out of office in 1887 after years of political decline.

Crispi's major concerns before and during his reign is the protection of Italy from their dangerous neighbor Austria-Hungary.

To challenge the threat, Crispi works to build Italy as a great world power through increased military expenditures, as and advocate of expansionism, and trying to win Germany's favor by joining the Triple Alliance, which includes both Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1882 and which will remain officially intact until 1915.

While helping Italy develop strategically, he continues trasformismo and authoritarian rule, once even suggesting the use of martial law to ban opposition parties.

The overwhelming attention paid to foreign policy alienates the agricultural community in Italy, which has been in decline since 1873.

Both radical and conservative forces in the Italian parliament had demanded that the government investigate how to improve agriculture in Italy.

The investigation, which had started in 1877 and was released eight years later, showed that agriculture was not improving, that landowners were swallowing up revenue from their lands and contributing almost nothing to the development of the land.

There was aggravation by lower class Italians to the breakup of communal lands, which benefits only landlords.

Most of the workers on the agricultural lands are not peasants but short-term laborers who at best are employed for one year.

Peasants without stable income are forced to live off meager food supplies, disease is spreading rapidly, and plagues are reported, including a major cholera epidemic which kills at least 55,000 people.

The Italian government cannot deal with the situation effectively due to the mass overspending of the Depretis government, which has left Italy in huge debt.

Italy has also suffered economically because of overproduction of grapes for their vineyards in the 1870s and 1880s at a time when France's vineyard industry is suffering from phylloxera, a vine disease caused by insects.