piedmont

1. (historiography) Any region that could serve as a basis for national unification, as Piedmont did for the Italian Risorgimento.Examples: "As it was, Greece had no 'Piedmont' with which to begin her Unification – no Piedmont to make alliances with other states, no Piedmontese bureaucracy and diplomatic service, no well-equipped and well-supplied regular army."; "The rise of an independent Bulgarian state challenged the view of many Serbs that they were the "Piedmont" of the Balkans, the ones to unify all Balkan Slavs."; "The more influental National Democratic party was founded in 1899, and it hoped to work through existing channels in Austria to create a separate Ukrainian province of eastern Galicia, which someday might become the Piedmont of an independent Ukrainian state on both sides of the Austro-Russian border."