Working with images and texts: Elio Vittorini’s Il Politecnico

Il Politecnico (1945–47) is the most relevant Italian cultural journal in the immediate aftermath of WWII. It is also the most anomalous; the systematic integration in its graphic layout of textual and visual elements made it more similar to the illustrated magazines of the time than to other cultural journals. The choice to present highbrow contents in a graphic layout associated with popular mass media served to complicate the already tricky relationship between the editor – the writer Elio Vittorini – and the intellectuals working in the cultural agencies planning the journal: the Italian Communist Party and the publishing house Einaudi. A reconstruction of the intellectual network surrounding Il Politecnico and of how it began shrinking during the months of its lifespan shows how this conflict developed and finally led to its closure.     

A Round Table discussion of The Risorgimento Revisited. Nationalism and Culture in Nineteenth Century Italy (edited by Silvana Patriarca and Lucy Riall)

Based on the Round Table discussion held at the Remarque Institute, New York University, in November 2012, this paper consists of comments on the volume of essays The Risorgimento Revisited. Nationalism and Culture in Nineteenth Century Italy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), edited by Silvana Patriarca and Lucy Riall, followed by the editors' responses.     

Italian receptions of Hegel: Epilogue

ABSTRACT

The reconstruction of national receptions of Hegel, and the inflections of his influence through local traditions and international exchanges, remains a fruitful field of investigation. The Anglophone literature has been relatively neglectful of the specific contributions made by Italian readings of Hegel, from his earliest reception onwards. The collection published here builds toward a fuller understanding of Hegel’s diagnosis of the origins and functions of the modern state and the dialectics of modern individuality and freedom, as these issues appear in debates undertaken in the Italian Risorgimento and beyond.     

The Rothschilds in Naples

Abstract

The Rothschild bank in Naples was founded following the Restoration of 1815, and thereafter played a major role in the financial affairs of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and other Italian states until Italy’s Unification after which its operations were transferred to Turin and Rome in 1863. This article examines the career of Karl Rothschild and his son Adolphe in Naples, and describes their close contacts with the Neapolitan government, their intervention to finance the return of Pope Plus IX to Rome following the revolution of 1848–9, and their financial dealings with Cavour and the Kingdom of Piedmont-Savoy in the early 1850s. As well as contacts with the parent Rothschild banking operations in Frankfurt and London, the article examines the Rothschilds’ relations with other foreign and local bankers in Naples. It also explores their role in Neapolitan society and their role in the re-establishment of the Jewish community in Naples in 1830, which they continued to watch with interest long after the family’s banking interests in the city had been wound up.     

Old wine in new bottles: civic nation‐building and ethnic nationalism in schooling in Piedmont,ca. 1700–1861

ABSTRACT. Gellner (1983 : 35) equates nationalism with ‘the organisation of human groups into large, centrally educated, culturally homogeneous units’. As the theorist of nationalism argues, and as recent and not so recent historical research shows, the modernisation of schooling is a defining moment in this process. The objective of this article is twofold: first, to show that during the Risorgimento schooling in Piedmont became nationalist; and second, to explain why that was the case. In doing so, it is argued that: (a) the modernisation of schooling reflected the rise of laissez faire liberalism, industrialisation and the enfranchisement of the middle class; and (b) the leadership of the Risorgimento revived pre‐modern ethnic symbols of patriotism to legitimate inequality and state formation under conditions of individualism.     

‘Be Not a Copy if Thou Canst Be an Original’: German Philosophy,Republican Pedagogy,Benthamism and Saint-Simonism in the Political Thought of Gioacchino di Prati

Summary

Born to a noble family in the Italian Trentino, Prati studied philosophy in Austria and Germany. Returning to Italy, he joined the carbonari, a network of revolutionary secret societies. Forced into exile in Switzerland, he worked as an educator alongside Pestalozzi. Following his expulsion from Switzerland, Prati sought refuge in Britain, becoming acquainted with Coleridge, the Benthamite utilitarians, and the Owenites. Following the July Revolution, Prati went to Paris, where he became a Saint-Simonian. Returning to Britain, he sought to convert the British to Saint-Simonism, before undertaking a series of other literary projects. He eventually returned to Italy, where he entered into correspondence with the Roman Catholic philosopher Antonio Rosmini. Prati left behind him a trail of letters, newspaper articles, pamphlets, and books, written in four different European languages. These have been hitherto neglected by scholars, and constitute the basis of the current article.     

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.     

Garibaldi and Mazzini: thought and action

Abstract

The relationship between Mazzini and Garibaldi is described in its ideological roots and in its political developments, in order to show their different attitude towards the Italian unification. Although their first misunderstanding happened during the Roman Republic in 1849, Mazzini's influence is still strong in the organization and in the success of the liberation of Two Sicilies in 1860, particularly through Francesco Crispi. The final personal break was caused by the unlucky experience of the Mentana expedition (1867), when Garibaldi failed to free Rome. Fundamental ideas as democracy, republic, social justice, humanity and universal brotherhood have been however always common to them. The two protagonists of Risorgimento never intended accepting the role to which their fateful encounter prompted them – the one to provide the brawn and the other the brains for Italy's liberation. Just as Mazzini never renounced involving himself in the operational decisions of the movement, Garibaldi never gave up his own way of thinking and looking at things.     

Jewish experiences in the Italian Risorgimento: political practice and national emotions of Florentine and Leghorn Jewry (1849-1860)

Recent political and historical debates in Italy have led to a re-examination of the Risorgimento. This article asks what this revisionist reconsideration of the national past means for Italian Jews and whether Italian-Jewish history needs to be rewritten. Taking Tuscany as a case study, this article examines Jewish experiences in ­Florence and Leghorn during the Risorgimento, from the return to power of Grand Duke Leopold II after the revolution of 1848-9 to 1859, when Tuscany joined the new Italian national state. Tuscan Jews participated enthusiastically in the national movement, playing a decisive role in the development of the new political culture and in creating the emotional appeal of the nation. Jews were deeply integrated into the new national state and shared the same values and political attitudes as their Christian counterparts. Any reconsideration of the Risorgimento must take into account that - from a Jewish point of view - this period had remarkable innovative aspects and promising perspectives.     

A new military history of the Italian Risorgimento and Anti-Risorgimento: the case of ‘transnational soldiers’

The article discusses new studies of foreign soldiers in the Italian armed groups of the (Anti-)Risorgimento against the background of recent scholarship on ‘transnational soldiers’, which acknowledges the complexities of foreigners' initial motives for enlistment and of the transnational processes inside the single armies. The article suggests that from the mundane structures of military life to the perceptions of the rank-and-file, many aspects of the soldiering experience in the multinational armed groups on all sides of the Risorgimento actually advanced rather than obviated national boundaries. This paper further demonstrates that the military cultures of the nationalists and the anti-unity forces were much more porous and mutually constitutive than is often recognised. The histories of the ‘transnational soldiers’ in the armed groups of the Risorgimento and Anti-Risorgimento are crucial for a possibly new, comparative history of the armed groups of the (Anti-)Risorigmento. This paper explores approaches of the culturally revived ‘new military history’ and suggests that it provides much still unrealised potential for Risorgimento historiography.     

A legal theory for the nation state. Pasquale Stanislao Mancini,Hegelianism and Piedmontese liberalism after 1848

ABSTRACT

This article aims to shed light on the Italian liberals’ contribution to the post-1848 European debate on nationality, representative government and the theory of the state, through focus on the political thought of Pasquale Stanislao Mancini. Building on Vico and Hegel’s philosophies of law and history, Mancini developed a sui generis tradition of national liberalism that founded representative government on a theory of the state that identified freedom and nationality. Far from being the passive and provincial adaptation of Anglo-French currents of liberalism, Mancini’s political thought, while engaging with the contemporary European debates on freedom and constitutional government, nurtured an original constitutional theory that connected conflicting ideas of cosmopolitan freedom and national patriotism.     

Echoes of tradition: Liang Qichao’s reflections on the Italian Risorgimento and the construction of Chinese nationalism

This paper examines how Liang Qichao viewed the Italian Risorgimento, with the focus on his reflections on its meanings in the historical contexts of Chinese politics and tradition. It will identify and analyze the many forces and ideas that influenced Liang as he formulated his reflections, especially the timing around the turn of the twentieth century and the discourses of nascent nationalism in Japan where Liang lived in exile. The way Liang created – or recreated – the Italian story demonstrated that the Chinese had finally begun to realize a crucial point about the building of a modern nation. While Britain, the United States, and France were able to build a modern nation by starting from the grass roots and more closely observing Enlightenment ideals, China did not have the luxury or the time to follow the same path. In the age of high imperialism, the weak would simply be weeded out quickly. Without national salvation, there could be no modern nation. National salvation, as exemplified by the Risorgimento, involved maintaining and glorifying the country’s own traditions and core values, which would in turn unify different social segments. Liang and his fellow reformers realized the importance of having simultaneously a national cause, a single political party, and a single leader, instead of having to take separate steps toward awakening. Liang’s awakening paved the way for the unfolding of the great Chinese revolutions of the twentieth century, led first by the Kuomintang and then by the Communists. Following Liang’s track of thinking, they both strived to build – or rebuild – a political centralism.     

Resurrections and rebirths: how the Risorgimento shaped modern Italian politics

The Risorgimento was the process of independence and unification of the Italian nation between 1848 and 1860, and has remained a powerful symbol of Italian politics ever since. Elaborating on Jan Assmann’s concept of cultural memory, the article discusses the Risorgimento at crucial moments in twentieth-century Italian politics: the 1911 anniversary of unification, the elaboration of the Risorgimento during fascism, the re-appropriation of the Risorgimento by the left and by the Resistance during the 1930s and 1940s, the general semantic space carved by the post-war democratic forces on both right and left with reference to the Risorgimento, and the sudden return to the memory of the Risorgimento in the 1990s and afterwards. The aim of the article is to understand both continuities and changes in the reference to the Risorgimento in twentieth-century political discourse, and to put into perspective Italy’s ‘particular’ road to modernity within a comparative European frame.     

Southern rebels against Italian unification: the Great Brigandage in the province of Capitanata

This article explores counter-revolutionary brigandage in Southern Italy after 1860 (also known as Great Brigandage). Working from archival sources, the article offers a new interpretation of the interactions between the political, social and criminal aspects of the guerrilla war against the Risorgimento. Notwithstanding the plurality of the individual motives leading single actors to fight, it is argued that brigandage was an essentially political phenomenon and that the alliances between common bandits and loyalist forces were made possible only in the macro-political setting of the collapse of the Neapolitan monarchy, the difficulties facing Italian state-building, and the emergence of popular legitimist sympathies after 1860.     

La Sicilia dei Moncada. Le corti,l'arte e la cultura nei secoli XVI–XVII

In the last few decades many studies have underlined the role of philhellenism in shaping the Risorgimento as a transnational movement. But philhellenism also had a significant impact in embodying the pre-unification Italian state in a new imaginative framework, marked by the binary oppositions of civilized/barbarian, liberal/despotic and north/south. This article analyses the influence of philhellenism in shaping the imagery of the Kingdom of Sardinia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the role played by this local imagery in promoting opposing patriotisms within the national political sphere in the years leading up to the unification of Italy. Cavour’s moderate party stressed the positive impact of the Piedmontese domination over the island of Sardinia in order to underline Piedmont's image as a force of modernization of a land strongly marked by feudal despotism and pastoral violence. By contrast, Mazzini and the democrats also deployed a philhellenic narrative scheme to explain the backwardness of Sardinia with reference to the despotic and ‘oriental’ character of the Piedmontese domination in an attempt to encourage opposition to unification under the leadership of the subalpine government.     

The Austrian ‘occupation’ of Ferrara in 1847: its legal aspect between myth and reality

The so-called occupation of the papal town of Ferrara by Austrian troops in the late summer of 1847 became an important chapter in the history of the Risorgimento. It provoked strong anti-Austrian resentment in Italy, where Austria’s conduct was generally regarded as aggressive and illegal. As this article attempts to prove from an investigation of the legal aspect of the affair, the accusation that the Austrians had violated international law with their actions in Ferrara is nothing but another Risorgimento myth. The same accusation was also a way for the papal government to attempt to denigrate Austria, although the question of legality actually meant little for the pope who used the affair to increase his popularity among Italians. Consequently, Austria’s determined effort to settle the affair on a legal basis was anachronistic vis-à-vis the new political situation that arose in Italy and was thus doomed to failure in advance.