British imperialism and Southern liberalism: re-shaping the Mediterranean space, c. 1817–1823

Abstract

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to offer an intellectual history of the British Empire’s involvement in the Mediterranean during the revolutions of the 1820s, focusing in particular on debates between British, Neapolitan and Sicilian intellectuals about international order in the Mediterranean. It points to the existence of a specific British debate on the nature and significance of Britain’s imperial presence in the Central Mediterranean, which in turn fostered Southern reflections on the benefits and legal boundaries of an imperial protectorate. Within Neapolitan reflections on imperialism, I shall argue, there were to be found calls for a British presence in the Mediterranean supportive of liberalism but devoid of any civilizing mission or exercise of sovereignty over the seas. Southern intellectuals thus envisaged the Mediterranean as a space characterized by liberty of navigation and commerce, national self-government and the absence of hierarchies between sovereign states.