A term derived from the Italian Italia irredenta (Italy unredeemed) which designates a nationalist political movement born in Italy in the 1870s. It called for the annexation by Italy of territories considered historically Italian, particularly those in which the Italian language was used. The majority of these territories were situated in the old Austro-Hungarian empire: Istria, Dalmatia, southern Tyrol, Trentino. At the beginning of the 20th century, Mussolini’s fascists appropriated the movement and extended its claims to French territories (Nice, Savoy, Corsica, Tunisia), to the island of Malta and southern Switzerland. Gabriele d’Annunzio (1863-1938) seized the town of Fiume (the present day Rijeka in Croatia) in 1919 in order to cede it to the Italian kingdom. He didn’t succeed. In our day, by analogy, the term is used to design any nationalist movement claiming the same principles of unifying or gathering together territories on a linguistic and cultural basis.