Travel,migration, exile: Garibaldi's global fame

In this article, it is argued that Garibaldi's global fame owes much to his own experiences as a migrant and exile in the Americas. Overseas, Garibaldi not only acquired several practical and political skills, he also built up an important network of friends and supporters and became a hybrid figure able to adapt his image to diverse political settings. At the same time, Garibaldi relied on the trope of exile, developed by people like Ugo Foscolo, to define his opposition to, first, Italy's Restoration governments and, after Italian unification, the new moderate liberal regime. The article also looks at Garibaldi's life on Caprera and it is further argued that here Garibaldi combined elements of his previous experiences to fashion a role for himself as a ‘foreigner in Italy’. Garibaldi was a symbol of many worlds as well as a hero of two and it is precisely this hybrid nature of his appeal that can explain his global popularity.     

From the Grassroots: Bernard Narokobi and the Making of Papua New Guinea's Constitution

ABSTRACT

Bernard Narokobi's concept of the Melanesian Way was influenced by a variety of factors, including his own childhood in the village, his religion, and the understandings of the people around him. He also drew inspiration from his exposure to the views and opinions of the many Papua New Guineans who contributed to the work of the Constitutional Planning Committee (CPC) between 1972 and 1975 when he served as a consultant to the committee. He shared the belief in a specifically ‘Melanesian’ way of social organization and cosmological understanding with the others who took part in the CPC's work, most prominently its de facto chairman, Father John Momis. With Momis he drew on the people's contributions to formulate PNG's National Goals and Directive Principles, which, at least in part, embody Narokobi's understanding of what it is to be Melanesian.     

Sir Edward Grey: The Private Life of a Foreign Secretary

ABSTRACT

This article examines the private life of Sir Edward Grey in order to explore some of the contradictions in Grey's character that continue to interest biographers and academics: he was apparently without ambition yet he pursued a successful political career; he longed to live his life in the country but spent much of it working in London; he was a man whose reputation was built on honesty and integrity but recent studies hint at extra-marital affairs and illegitimate children. It shows that Grey had an aptitude for public life and a desire to satisfy a sense of public duty but was reluctant to become defined by it, having other passions as countryman and naturalist. But the balance in his life between work and leisure became increasingly strained due to the pressures of a ministerial career and the changing nature of politics. It also finds that Grey's personal life was not without colour, even if not all the infidelities attributed to him seem credible. In addition the article contributes to the debate over whether Sir Edward Grey was an ‘ambitious political operator’ or a ‘gentleman amateur’.     

Garibaldi and parliamentary democracy

Abstract

The extraordinary nature of Garibaldi's life is reflected in his involvement in parliamentary activities across a number of countries (Uruguay, Kingdom of Sardinia, Roman Republic, Kingdom of Italy, French Republic). After the national unification, Parliament became a kind of great sounding board in Garibaldi's strategy thanks in part to the fact that in the Chamber he could count on a group of followers who were always ready to support any issue vaguely to do with memories of the Risorgimento or irredentist aspirations. His failure to steer the new state in the desired direction through the legislative process certainly influenced Garibaldi's negative opinion of parliamentary work. Garibaldi could not however recognize as an expression of popular sovereignty a parliament in whose election only 2 per cent of the population were allowed to participate. His main political battle was the fight for universal suffrage which was intended to enfranchise all Italians, thus turning subjects into citizens and finally making parliamentary institutions nationally representative and democratically legitimate.     

Eric Voegelin as a Teacher's Teacher

ABSTRACT

Eric Voegelin was never interested in forming a school—his quest for truth was so Socratic that the last thing he wanted was people simply commenting on his own work. At the same time, his approach to the key texts of Western experience—and in his later years, of Eastern and archaic Neolithic and Paleolithic—blazed the way for his readers to get out there into that wide field of the human quest for transcendence and expand on his work in their own way. What this essay attempts, however sketchily, is to record his impact on my own teaching, with five samples of Voegelin-inspired courses I've developed. I begin with headlines from a philosophical effort at articulating an Irish Neolithic experience at Newgrange (3200 BC)—elsewhere, and following Voegelin, I've pushed that work back through Lascaux to Chauvet (32,000 BC). Then a brief mention of a Voegelinian reading of the beautiful Hindu Bhagavad Gita, followed by interpretations of Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn, and finally, a critique of Richard Dawkins' God Delusion. While, over the years, my classes also expanded on The World of the Polis and Plato and Aristotle, what Voegelin always seemed to demand was for us to engage in what he calls ‘the quest of the quest,' rather than simply repeat him. That's why I see him as the teacher's teacher: he wanted you, as a philosophy lecturer, to get on with your own search, and to awaken in your students what he called ‘the Question as a constant structure in the experience of reality.’     

The Later Jefferson and the Problem of Natural Rights

Abstract

The late Jefferson presents a puzzle to scholars. In his last years the author of the Declaration of Independence strongly opposed the Missouri Compromise and set important precedents for the political strategy of the antebellum South. This essay argues that these problematic aspects of Jefferson's career are more closely linked to his natural rights doctrine than is generally recognized and extend tendencies already present in Jefferson's draft of the Declaration. Unlike previous scholars who explain Jefferson's problematic politics by his racism or the inherent selfishness of Lockean natural right, I argue that the core flaw in Jefferson's natural rights doctrine is the encouragement it gives to self-righteousness. Because he responded to the problem of slavery in a spirit of angry self-defense, Jefferson's understanding of natural rights blinded him to the ways in which his actions strengthened slavery and undermined his own most cherished political achievements.     

Vietnam: The Decision to Resume Armed Struggle in the South,Summer 1958–Summer 1959

Abstract

We are at war and society is man-oriented. My husband was wounded in the last war and I intend to make a comfortable and happy home for him. He risks his life. He serves long weeks in Sinai doing reserve duty and I sit here in comfort and security. When he is back I am proud to cook and bake, to take care of him, and to show him love and gratitude. I don't feel inferior or degraded.     

Silencing the laws to save the fatherland: Rousseau’s theory of dictatorship between Bodin and Schmitt

ABSTRACT

Jean-Jacques Rousseau devoted an important chapter of his Social Contract to the dictatorship. Carl Schmitt interpreted Rousseau’s chapter as marking the transition from ‘commissarial’ to ‘sovereign dictatorship’. This article argues that Schmitt’s interpretation is historically and conceptually inaccurate. Instead of paving the way for sovereign dictatorship, Rousseau carefully distinguished the dictatorship from the people’s sovereign authority. Taking position in the ‘debate’ between Bodin and Grotius on the relation between dictatorship and sovereignty, he argued that the dictator could provisionally suspend the people’s sovereign authority, but not abolish it. More particularly, the dictator did not possess the power to make generally binding laws, which had to remain the exclusive authority of the popular assembly. However, this did not prevent Rousseau from recognizing the dictatorship as a means for democratic reform. Rousseau thus conceived of the dictatorship as a time-limited and revocable commission to protect the constitution and to provide for a more stable and effective state organization based on the principle of popular sovereignty.     

Lord Herbert of Cherbury and the Presentation of the Henrician Reformation in his Life and Raigne of King Henry the Eighth

Abstract

It was no coincidence that Charles I commissioned a study of the life and reign of Henry VIII in the 1630s as he proceeded with controversial anti-Calvinist religious reforms in the face of Puritan opposition and suspicion that he was a closet Catholic. Lord Herbert of Cherbury's willingness to undertake the laborious scholarly task is initially more surprising but can be explained by his commitment to the eradication of religious conflict and his realization that it would enable him to disseminate his own rationalist, reunionist and Erastian views on religious belief, the organization of religion and the location of religious authority.     

In Love with Garibaldi: Romancing the Italian Risorgimento

This article discusses the meaning of ‘love’ in the political transfer of the Italian Risorgimento. After a general introduction on the possible connections between love and nineteenth-century politics, the author focuses on Giuseppe Garibaldi, one of the most colourful Founding Fathers of modern Italy. While Garibaldi's overwhelming presence in Italian monuments suggests that his political role has been defined by the Italian nation, he started his career as an international fighter for freedom for whom national borders did not matter. In fact, the Garibaldi myth that made the Italian Risorgimento a popular cause in other countries might have been heavily shaped by ‘warm attachments’ between Garibaldi and women and men all over the world. By analysing how these ‘foreigners’ turned both themselves and Garibaldi into vehicles of revolutionary politics, this article shows that in the political transfer of Garibaldi it is not so clear who is the receiver and who the transmitter, what is the centre and what the periphery, male and female: as happens in romantic love as imagined by revolutionaries like Garibaldi, the active and passive subject alternate, giving shape to a political practice that is truly interactive and international.

Résumé: Cet article se penche sur la signification de ‘l'amour’ dans le transfert politique du Risorgimento. Après une brève discussion des connections entre amour et politique au dix-neuvième siècle, l'auteur discute plus en détail Giuseppe Garibaldi, le père fondateur le plus pittoresque de l'Italie moderne. Alors que les représentations monumentales de Garibaldi suggèrent un rôle politique purement national, il commença sa carrière comme un internationaliste combattant pour la liberté plutôt que pour des frontières. De fait le mythe Garibaldi qui fit du Risorgimento une cause populaire dans bien des pays aurait été produit par des attachements chaleureux entre Garibaldi et des hommes et femmes à travers le monde. En analysant comment ces étrangers se firent des agents de la politique révolutionnaire cet article montre que dans le transfert politique Garibaldien il n'est pas très aisé de distinguer qui donne et qui reçoit, qui est au centre et qui est périphérique. Tout comme dans l'amour romantique imaginé par des révolutionnaires comme Garibaldi, les sujets passifs et actifs alternent et donnent forme à une pratique politique véritablement interactive et internationale.     

Stewart,Kant, and the Reworking of Common Sense

Summary

Dugald Stewart was the first metaphysician of any significance in Britain who attempted to take account of Kantian philosophy, although his analysis appears generally dismissive. Traditionally this has been imputed to Stewart's poor understanding of Kant and to his efforts to defend the orthodoxy of common sense. This paper argues that, notwithstanding Stewart's reading, Kant's philosophy helped him in a reconsideration and reassessment of common sense philosophy. In his mature works—the Philosophical Essays (1810), the second volume of the Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind (1814), and the second part of his historical ‘Dissertation? (1815–1821)—Stewart's analysis of Kantian philosophy is far from being uniform. In the first two works, he takes a cautious approach to transcendentalism, showing some interest in the challenge it might represent for common sense; in the last, he turns to rash criticism. This change may appear confusing and inconsistent unless considered in the light of a precise ‘nationalistic’ strategy. In fact, once Stewart had taken from Kantian philosophy what he deemed useful for his own aims, he eventually dismissed it in order to show that his reworked version of common sense was the most original and most consistent outcome of the whole Anglo-Scottish philosophical tradition.     

The nobility of English Gascony: the case of Jourdain de l'Isle

Among the greatest obstacles to effective English authority in Gascony was a criminal element within the nobility. Lawless, acquisitive, and defiant of all authority, such individuals were especially troublesome for Edward II whose control over Gascony would have been tenuous in any event. Among the most notorious in this period was Jourdain de l'Isle, younger son of a powerful Gascon nobleman. Holding extensive territories through both inheritance and marriage, Jourdain was a violent and aggressive man who attacked indiscriminately merchants, clergy, and even his fellow noblemen. Ignoring the efforts of the ducal government to control him, Jourdain appealed to the Capetian Parlement of Paris; but the French like the English had little use for him. His only supporter was his kinsman, Pope John XXII, who sought to assist Jourdain against both ducal and Capetian authorities, after the Gascon's crimes had brought him the enmity of both. While the pope's efforts had no result, neither the English nor the French succeeded in punishing Jourdain until in 1323 he defiantly came to Paris, where he was tried and executed for his sundry crimes. Jourdain's sorry career illustrates the problems that such men created for English rule in Gascony and makes clear that in at least this situation Plantagenet and Capetian authorities were in total agreement.     

Poetry as Thought and Action: Mazzini's Reflections on Byron

Summary

This article opens with a brief introduction to Giuseppe Mazzini, with particular reference to his commitment to republicanism, an ideal that would be fulfilled in Italy only after considerable time and with great difficulty. It then focuses on Mazzini's critical reception of Byron. Although Giuseppe Mazzini and Percy Bysshe Shelley would have allowed a more obvious comparison, it was Byron who really attracted Mazzini's attention and criticism. Mazzini uses Byron, on the one hand, as a means to demonstrate that Italians could discuss European poetry without putting at risk their national identity, or, as the classicists maintained, that fragile and fragmented profile of a nation that contemporary Italy offered to the minds and hearts of thousands of young people. On the other hand, however, Mazzini questions Byron's authority by subverting and converting his value, in a very personal way: he gradually substitutes Byron's with a different authority and credits him with new values. Mazzini could not accept Byron as the emblem of elitism and isolation: Byron's solipsism needed to be purified, and his renowned cynical attitude tempered; eventually Byron's myth needed to be connected to the destiny of peoples and nations.     

Explanatory structures

Muratori has often been portrayed as a moral philosopher who represented the traditional neo-Aristotelian mainstream of Italian intellectual life in the early part of the eighteenth century. His loyalty to Christianity as a basis from which societies ought to be reformed has determined his reputation as a ‘pre-enlightened’ thinker. Yet, it is argued here that not only was Muratori very much in touch with the state of the art of early eighteenth-century moral philosophy, but also that he was really a historian with political interests who came to develop a renewed Christian moral philosophy as a tool to respond to the political challenges of the time. Fallen man's preference for self-preservation to natural freedom prepared him for engaging in increasingly sociable contexts that required further self-disciplining and moral improvement. Thus, man cultivated his fallen condition into prudence and ultimately developed a capacity both for charity and for functioning in modern commercial societies.     

Elite migrations in modern Italy: patterns of settlement,integration and identity negotiation

Abstract

Francesco Crispi has often appeared a paradoxical figure. In the earlier part of his life he was a revolutionary republican and a friend of Mazzini. After 1860 he accepted the monarchy, but remained very much a man of the Left and in many ways a quintessential democrat. Yet he ended his career as an authoritarian Prime Minister, a vigorous opponent of the Far Left, and an imperialist, who prorogued parliament and contemplated dispensing with representative government altogether. This article contends that Crispi's career has more coherence than is commonly suggested; it focuses on an important but hitherto neglected aspect of his thinking, namely the problem of how to achieve a sense of national consciousness in Italy through ‘political education’. The article traces the development of the idea of national political education throughout Crispi's career and argues that his two terms as Prime Minister in 1887–91 and 1893–6 can only be fully understood in the context of his long‐standing concern with this problem.     

Professor C.F.J. Muller as historikus

Joseph Booth's influence on the development of early Christianity in Malâwi has been exaggerated at the expense of the Africans actually involved. Around the turn of the century he introduced a number of industrial missions into the country, but his connection with them was short-lived. Almost as quickly as he set them up he was expelled from their ranks for reasons of financial mismanagement. This happened at least eight times during his missionary career. Money matters proved to be his undoing with Africans as well. Booth's false promises of financial aid to struggling Seventh Day Baptists resulted in an active campaign on their part to rid themselves of him. He also parted ways with John Chilembwe, Elliott Kamwana and Jordan Ansumba. Booth was a man full of contradictions. While preaching brotherhood he quarrelled with everyone; an advocate of Africa for the Africans, he demanded total sub-service from those around him. His anti-colonial message was blighted by taking advantage of a friendship with Harry Johnston to acquire large tracts of land from Africans for very little money. Joseph Booth was an emotionally troubled individual who did more to hinder the spread of Christianity in Central Africa than help it.     

The "Lone Dissenter"

The tenure of Associate Justice—and later Chief Justice—William H. Rehnquist on the Supreme Court spanned more than three decades. Despite his public importance, he was a quite private man. During his time on the Court, relatively few accounts appeared of what life was like inside the Rehnquist chambers, especially during his years as an Associate Justice. In the aftermath of his death last fall, former clerks have begun to reminisce about what it was like to clerk for him.     

The temptations of William Pascoe Crook: An experience of cultural difference in the Marquesas, 1797—1798

Abstract

The missionary William Pascoe Crook was the first European to make an extended residence in the Marquesas. He failed to make a single convert in the two years he was there but instead risked a ‘conversion’ of sorts in everyday compromises between fitting in with, and preserving his independence from, a way of life he found to be abhorrent. This paper reconstructs the quality of Crook's experience during his sojourn in the Marquesas and reflects on the ethnographic ‘Account of the Marquesas Islands’ compiled on his return to London in 1799. It emphasises the processes by which Crook came to a partial understanding of tapu and the role of mimicry in his adaptation to lapu as a force that will make sense of him, but that he himself does not comprehend. The paper relates Crook's experience of cultural difference to problems in the anthropological concept of culture.     

Art That Makes Itself and other generative beginnings: Paul Brown interviewed by Bronaċ Ferran

ABSTRACT

In an interview with Brona? Ferran, Paul Brown recalls his involvement with people and places formative in shaping important countercultures of the 1960s and his long-term interest in generative art processes. He describes his interests since childhood in art and technological thinking which was further inspired by the Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition at the ICA in 1968. Shortly before seeing this, he had left art school, discouraged by a tutor who, on seeing a system-based drawing he had made, told him he would never become an artist. This exit proved liberating as Brown swiftly went on to forge an autonomous route working on light-shows and other multimedia events particularly at The Blackie in Liverpool, which had links to Drury Lane Arts Lab and other centres of radical experimentation. He returned to college in the early 1970s to study art and computing which became the basis of his successful art career.