Naples and Napoleon: Southern Italy and the European Revolutions, 1780-1860

Abstract

The last twenty-five years have seen a flourishing of work in Napoleonic history, and Napoleonic Italy has attracted a great proportion of it. Indeed, studies of non-French regions by non-French scholars have done most to transform the way in which the Napoleonic period is viewed in the wider context of modern European history. John Davis's monograph now joins a clutch of studies of non-French regions under Napoleonic hegemony, where the debate over the impact of French domination and reform is so crucial for an understanding of their future evolution. To Michael Rowe's study of the Rhineland, Simon Schama's pioneering book on the Netherlands, and the work of Helmut Berding on Westphalia, to cite only the tip of the canon, as it were, must be added Naples and Napoleon. In the context of the historiography of nineteenth-century Italy, Davis now adds the Mezzogiorno to the work done on Lombardy in English by Alex Grab and on the Veneto by David Laven, on Sicily by Lucy Riall, and on Bologna by Steven Hughes. When taken together with modern studies in Italian by Carlo Capra, Anna-Maria Rowe and Livio Antonielli, Naples and Napoleon is a much-needed contribution to the literature, particularly in English.