italian nationalism is a movement which claims that the italians are a nation with a single homogeneous identity, and therefrom seeks to promote the cultural unity of italy as a country. from an italian nationalist perspective, italianness is defined as claiming cultural and ethnic descent from the latins, an italic tribe which originally dwelt in latium and came to dominate the italian peninsula and much of europe. because of that, italian nationalism has also historically adhered to imperialist theories. the romantic (or soft) version of such views is known as italian patriotism, while their integral (or hard) version is known as italian fascism.