History of Sardinia
In the Early Middle Ages, through barbarian movements, the waning of the Byzantine Empire influence in the western Mediterranean and the Saracen raids, the island fell out of the sphere of influence of any higher government. This led to the birth of four kingdoms called "Judicates" (Latin: "Judicati"; Sardinian: "Judicados") in the 8th through 10th centuries. Falling under papal influence, Sardinia became the focus of the rivalry of Genoa and Pisa, the Judicates and the Crown of Aragon, which eventually subsumed the island as the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1324. The Kingdom was to last until 1718, when it was ceded to the Piedmontese House of Savoy; later, in 1861, it would thus become the Kingdom of Italy and finally in 1946 the Italian Republic.
History of Sardinia
In 1799 King Charles Emmanuel IV was ousted from Piedmont by the French army, and moved his court to Cagliari (his brother and successor Victor Emmanuel I returned to Turin only in 1814). At the end of the 18th century, the Universities of Sassari and Cagliari were restored. In 1823, Victor Emmanuel I issued the "editto delle chiudende" (Enclosures Act), a legislative act that abolished all community latifundias, introducing the private property and provoking heavy protests from Sardinians. In 1847, under King Charles Albert, with the so-called Perfect fusion were abolished all the administrative differences between Sardinia and the Italian mainland: this manoveur has been made it out to be the only one possible in order to grant equal rights to all inhabitants of the Kingdom, that would become a unitary state and the basic legislation of the future united Italy as well.
In 1820, the Savoyards imposed the "Enclosures Act" ("Editto delle Chiudende") on the island, aimed at turning the land's traditional collective ownership, a cultural and economic cornerstone of Sardinia since the Nuragic times, to private property. This gave rise to many abuses, as the reform favoured the landholders while excluding the poor Sardinian farmers and shepherds, who witnessed the abolition of the communal rights and the sale of the land. Many local rebellions like the Nuorese "Su Connottu" ("The Already Known" in Sardinian) riot in 1868, all repressed by the King's army, resulted in an attempt to return to the past and reaffirm the right to use the once common land.