The nation as seen from below: Rome in 1870

When Rome joined the Kingdom of Italy in 1870, its symbolic importance played a large part in its role as the new capital of the nation-state. That very symbolic weight, though, left but a small space for the Romans themselves, particularly the lower classes. While recent scholarship on Italian nation-building has explored the cultural project underlying its political developments, it still remains to be understood how the lower classes first experienced and responded to their incorporation into the nation. Courted by the new nation-state, its clerical opposition and its radical opposition alike, their Risorgimento was different from that of the Romantic tropes informing the new national politics.