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The problem of the way the Italian–and more exactly the Tuscan–countryside entered politics in the nineteenth century is connected to the history of national unification and integration of the new Kingdom of Italy. The events of the 1860s that determined the political transition to the new State system allow us to follow the progress of new national and liberal ideas in the countryside. These experiences make it possible to reconstruct the actual means of building citizenship for Tuscan sharecroppers. The assessment of this process of nationalization and political apprenticeship provides a new interpretation of the positive role of the liberal Italian State, long underestimated by Italian historiography, which laid emphasis on the disappointments of the Post-Risorgimento.