Risorgimento Research Articles

Tavolate e territorio. Feste, cibo e comunità in Italia dal secondo dopoguerra a oggi

Traditional feasts (the Palio in Siena), celebrations of the local patron saint (Festa del Redentore); events organized by long-standing charitable organizations (the Purgatory lunch in Gradoli), festivals staged by political groups (the First of May, Festa de L’Unità, or the Lega festivals), or even the replica of a 19th Century political banquet staged for the 150th jubilee of the Italian Unification provide important occasions for communities. Diverse as they are, they are all characterized by commensality and sharing of local food.

“Metempsychosis” and “Marvelous Affinities”: Re-Imagining the Past in the Ilyāḏah by Sulaymān al-Bustānī (1904) and in the Divano di ʿOmar ben al-Fared by Pietro Valerga (1874)

Abstract This article focuses on the image of the past in two translations produced in the contexts of the Arab Nahḍah and of the Italian Risorgimento. The first translation is the Italian rendering of ʿOmar ibn al-Fāriḍ’s mystical poems, published in 1872 by Pietro Valerga (1821-1903). The second is the Arabic translation of the Iliad, published in 1902 by Sulaymān al-Bustānī (1856-1925). Both translators refer to the past as a translation strategy: Pietro Valerga reads Ibn al-Fāriḍ through the verses of Petrarch and, in his work’s introduction, emphasizes the transmission of medieval Arab poetry to Italy; Sulaymān al-Bustānī reconstructs the world of the Iliad through Arabic poetic tradition and compares Greece to the ǧāhiliyyah (pre-Islamic age). The article sheds light on the potential of translation as a space of re-imagination of the past and invites us to read the works as two distinct, yet akin, attempts to express original interpretations of Italian and Arabic literary histories based on syncretism and cross-cultural translatability.

From the Napoleonic domination until Italian Unity: legal restrictions and innovations for the Jewish Community of Mondovì

The documents conserved in the Terracini Jewish Archive of Turin allow the reader to examine the application of the legislation concerning Jewish communities during the period of time starting from the Napoleonic domination until the Italian unity. My research focuses in particular on the notarial deeds and judicial documents relating to the property of the synagogue and the cemetery of the Jewish community of Mondovì. Under the rule of France the Jewish people living in Piedmont were allowed to become real estate owners and the plots of land where the Jewish cemetery was located and the house that hosted the synagogue in Mondovì were allotted to the Jewish community. During the Restoration, the ban to become real estate property was introduced again. Even if the Jewish people of Mondovì had bought from its owner the house of the synagogue and they had obtained from the French administration the property of the plots of land of the cemetery, they were not anymore recognized as owners. After the emancipation of the Jewish population and the Italian unity, the Jewish community of Mondovì claimed its rights on those real estate properties: my essay would focus on the exam of the archive documents that show how the legislation concerning real estate property for Jewish people was applied over time.

Pius IX in 1846-1848 - the Liberal Pope?

The paper discusses the first years of the pontificate of Pius IX (1846-1878), when the newly elected head of the Catholic Church was perceived as a “liberal Pope”. On the one hand, in 1846-1848 Pius IX was the Pope who carried out reforms and announced an amnesty. On the other hand, in the same period he criticized rationalism and created censorship commissions. The paper is another attempt to answer the question whether Pius IX was indeed a “liberal” Pope at the beginning of his pontificate. Special attention is given to the Pope’s policy during 1847. It was the time when the Papal States’ population expected the continuation of the reform process. The paper raises the question of Cardinals’ impact on the Pope, as well as on the pace of reform in the Papal States. Another key issue is the response of Pius IX to the revolutionary movement in Italy. The author concludes with the significance of the Pope’s refusal to struggle against Austria for the further development of the process of Italian Unification.

The response of taxpayer compliance to the large shock of Italian unification

Because of differences in the levels of taxation among pre-unitary states, Italian unification in 1861 determined differential increments in the tax burden among areas of the country. We constructed an index of these tax shocks and collected province-level data on historical and current indicators of tax evasion to evaluate the impact of the unification on tax compliance. We show that the historical variability in tax evasion reduced a lot in the following decades and that the convergence process preserved quite well the ranking in compliance among provinces. We also find that the shock to the tax burden explains much of the historical and current variability in tax evasion. The role of local congestion externalities, arising within a decentralized system of tax enforcement as that set in Italy, is formally explored to account for such evidence.

‘Civil’ and ‘purely civil’ in early unified Italy

The essay aims to examine the National Festival established in early unified Italy from a juridical standpoint. It intends to take a closer look at this issue by examining three prominent cases, the de-clericalisation of the Savoyard Monarchy’s Constitution Day and the so-called Albertine Statute, the Italian ‘Jubilee of the Fatherland’, and the blessing of the flags according to military discipline. In doing so, I will address the question of the ‘civil’ and ‘purely civil’ religion.

Origins and development of the Maria Montessori’s mathematical proposal

The introduction of complex mathematical concepts through perceptual and sensorial hands-on experiences is one of the most relevant aspects of the Montessori method proposal. This article aims to investigate the origins of the Montessori’s profound interest for mathematics, studying the history of the education of mathematics, after the unification of Italy, in which her school education took place. Her key concepts and beliefs about the learning of mathematics and, furthermore, the evolution of her proposal will be illustrated through the analysis of her main publications, both the generalist and the specialized ones in the field of mathematics (Psicoaritmetica and Psicogeometria), and handwritten notes about the lessons of XVI° international course, held in Rome in 1931, which the Opera Nazionale Montessori acquired from her students’ archives. Finally, an overview of the actualization of the Montessori method in the contemporary research will be explained, particularly focusing on the neuroscientific discoveries which have proved the effectiveness of the Montessori proposal to empower the cognitive processes involved in the development of mathematical thinking.

La prego di voler gradire una mia Carta dei prodotti alimentari…

The Authors examine some elements of the work of the great cartographer Benedetto Marzolla (1801-1858) who, together with Carlo Afàn de Rivera, represents the best among the intellectuals and technicians that the Kingdom of Two Sicilies yielded before the Italian unification. This contrasts with the commonplace outlined be the Savoyard-Risorgimental propaganda which describes Naples and the Kingdom as a country inhabited by incapables, depraved and lazy persons. The Authors resume the theme of the Map of Nourishing Products, an excellent work not only because it describes the terrestrial and marine nourishing productions, but also for the connection with many agrarian landscapes and relative trades. Moreover, the Authors present the Map of Excise Duty (1830) another work of Marzolla together with Valentino, never known or considered by cartography scholars. This map does not seem to be cited inside the catalogues or inventories about Marzolla’s production, compiled by Valerio or by others authors in the frame of the analysis of the Royal Topographical Office of Naples (ROT), especially along the second half of the XIX century. The “modernity” of Marzolla manifests not only in consideration of anti-historical comparisons with actual excellent or “organic” food products, but for the analogies with the original proposals of Brunet, Ferras and other academics of the Maison de la Géographie. Unfortunately, Italian geographers have devoted little attention to this field of study.

Testimonies to the History of Crime: The Italian Police Memoir, 1861-2014

The article analyses, for the first time, published memoirs by police officers following the unification of Italy. It argues that these memoirs are best considered as cultural artefacts, forming part of the popular literature of the period. That said, they developed into a distinct literary sub-genre. It is in fact a literary genre which developed as an editorial product in the wake of the nascent literature of investigation. Periodically, the memoir succeeded in arousing public interest, while never establishing itself as a stable genre in Italian publishing — something due to a lack of robust professional pride within the Italian police, which in turn provoked a lack of interest in the representation of their function and therefore an inability to enthuse the public. However, these memoirs contain stimulating pointers to the history of the social motivations, professional culture and ethics of police officers and officials, especially with reference to the history of the perception of crime and deviance in popular literature.

Victor/Victorian: Gender and Aesthetic Idealism During the Italian Risorgimento

Henry James’ short story, Last of the Valerii (1874), articulates the author’s final assessment of the Anglo-American style. The marriage between the American heiress and impoverished Italian nobleman expresses the transition in the American economy from rural agriculture to one driven by industrial wealth and the creation of large estates. By making the Italian aristocracy the protagonists of his Anglo-Italian novels, James also provides a cursive acknowledgement of the restoration of the Italian aristocracy which was at the heart of the revolutionaries’ nationalist debate during the Italian Risorgimento. The creation of a unified and independent Italy in 1871 also included a king, Victor-Emmanuel II. The desire to acquire the habits and style of the genteel European nobility was grafted onto the new American interest in collecting the aesthetic treasures of Europe then being acquired by wealthy Americans to form the major museum collections of America. Towards the turn of the century, Anglo-Italian authors and artists lost their interest in the revolutionary cause of Italy and centennial America, and replaced this cause with a new pure aestheticism, lacking an underlying political and moral agenda. James’ novels articulate a new crisis in marriage in which men declare their independence from their dependent women. James’ reversal of the women’s movement issue approaches domestic gender roles from the male perspective. His protagonists are educated aesthetes who long for escapism from the confines of societal gender and marriage roles. The new wealth acquired by Americans towards the end of the century during the Gilded Age, afforded such perversions of traditional male duties, without overtly supporting the women’s suffrage movement and rehabilitation of women’s employment.

David Lazzaretti: heretic, rebel, or mentally insane? A cold case in Post-Unification Italy

TABLE OF CONTENTS: 1. Introduction - 2. The life and works of David Lazzaretti, the “Second Christ” from Arcidosso - 3. The ‘Prophet’ on the stand: the criminal trials in the State Courts - 4. Lazzaretti before the Tribunal of the Roman Holy Office - 5. Life after Death: Different interpretations of the Lazzaretti case - 6. The Prophet and the Alienists - 7. Conclusion: a prismatic figure. ABSTRACT: The aim of this paper is to retrace a peculiar case occurred in the complex context of the decades after Italian Risorgimento and the Italian unification (1861). In particular, it will be analysed the case of David Lazzaretti a poor carter from Tuscany, self-proclaimed “Christ, Duce, Judge” and “the Second Son of God come to earth”, considered a heretic and excommunicated from the Catholic Church due his blasphemous writing. He founded the “Giurisdavidic Church” based on a sort of mystical and utopian socialism (his motto was: “The Republic is the kingdom of God”). His figure has given rise to lively controversy between those who considered him a martyr and who reputed him a mad visionary or a charlatan. In any case, Lazzaretti’s movements are emphasized above all for his tragic end: on the morning of August 18, 1878, while he was driving a peaceful procession from Monte Labbro to Arcidosso, a little town in Tuscany, he was killed by Italian carabinieri during a religious ceremony. After his death, medical science and in particular positivist psychiatry, also called “alienists”, described Lazzaretti not as a sacrilegious impostor but as a mentally ill person, who would have benefitted more from treatment than prosecution.

Displaying plaster casts, staging Romanization

Abstract In 1911, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the unification of Italy, a grand exhibition of Roman antiquities was hosted at the Baths of Diocletian in Rome. Rodolfo Lanciani, main agent behind the organization of this Mostra Archeologica, opted for exhibiting mainly reproductions of ancient monuments from the far-flung regions that once formed the Roman Empire. The aim was to reconstruct a coherent image of ancient Roman culture, directed towards the celebration of both the glorious Roman Empire and the expanding Italian one. By examining the selection of material exhibited and its display, this paper will analyse how early twentieth-century visions of the Roman past and the Italian present were reflected in the Mostra Archeologica. This analysis sheds light on the impact of these ideas and the nationalistic biases they introduced into the formulation of modern notions of Roman provincial art and archaeology.

Hector de Garriod (1803–1883): a marchand amateur in Risorgimento Italy

Abstract Baron Hector de Garriod (1803–1883) was a Savoyard nobleman who resided in Florence for most of his life, from 1835 to 1883, taking an active part in the social and artistic life of the city in the years of the Risorgimento and after the unification of Italy. His correspondence, surviving in a private archive in Cortona, and other documents that have surfaced in Italy and elsewhere in Europe, shed fresh light on this interesting yet neglected marchand amateur – his activities as an art dealer, his relationships with international museum agents and his dealings with renowned art collectors. Specific attention is paid here to Garriod’s private collection, now kept at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Chambéry, which represents one of the most important bequests of seventeenth-century Italian paintings to a French museum.

Italy’s Orient: Introduction

ABSTRACT This introduction aims to suggest connections between the articles published in this special number. While Orientalist stereotypes were recurrent in many of the writings discussed here, there was considerable variety in Italian approaches to the Orient. They were differentiated according to the needs and intellectual traditions of cities and regions (Turin, Milan, Florence, Naples and Sicily). Even more, they varied according to the object of interest – the Ottoman Empire, India, or the Far East. After Italian unification, the study of the Orient should be seen in the context of the discussion of Italy’s place in Europe, and the development of new commercial networks.

The First Italo-Ethiopian Clash over the Control of Eritrea and the Origins of Rome's Imperialism

Abstract In the wake of Italy's unification, the country's expansionist designs were aimed, as expected, toward the opposite shore of the Mediterranean. The barrage of developments that took place in this strategic area would shape the country's future alliances and colonial policies. The fear of French aggression on the coast of North Africa drove officials in Rome to the camp of the Central Powers, a diplomatic move of great importance for Europe's evolution prior to World War I. The disturbance of the Mediterranean balance of power, when France occupied Tunisia and Britain held Cyprus and Egypt, the inability to find a colony in proximity to Italy, and a series of diplomatic defeats led Roman officials to look to the Red Sea and to provoke war with the Ethiopian Empire.

Italians, freemasons and the Dawn of Egyptian nationalism

ABSTRACT In the Middle East and North Africa, Freemasonry became a considerable phenomenon between the second half of the nineteenth century and the mid-twentieth century, contributing in a more or less significant extent according to the cases, to the political and cultural developments of the region. The role of Masonry in the Arab and Islamic countries has been the subject of a number of studies on specific personalities, environments, or regions, however, many aspects would deserve more attention. This paper will focus on a segment of this history unexplored by other historians, that is the role of Italians in developing Egyptian National Freemasonry and, more in particular, the Italian Freemasons and Risorgimento culture contribution to shaping Egyptian proto-nationalism. During the nineteenth century many Italians exiles of the Risorgimento movements migrated to Egypt, where they became involved in masonic activities, but they also reached out the first nationalist organisations, spreading Mazzini’s ideas and ideals. In the following pages, two issues will be explored to ascertain the Italian Risorgimento influence: the activity of the Italian Masons, that emerges from documents of Masonic Archives and testimonies of the time, and the contribution to the Egyptian nationalist thought by the playwright and journalist James Sanua.

Italian Prisons in the Age of Positivism 1861–1914 by Mary Gibson

Reviewed by: Italian Prisons in the Age of Positivism 1861–1914 by Mary Gibson Chiara Lucrezio Monticelli Gibson, Mary – Italian Prisons in the Age of Positivism 1861–1914. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. 336 p. Mary Gibson’s Italian Prisons in the Age of Positivism 1861–1914 aims to emphasize the connections between the Italian experience and the broader cultural trends of that era. Such contextualization marks the first important challenge in the book: that of rethinking, through the Italian case study, some general assumptions in the history of modern prison. By going beyond the study of those countries (France, the United Kingdom, and the United States) that led the “first wave of reform” at the end of the eighteenth-century, new perspectives emerge in the analysis of the relation between prisons and modern society. The wider perspective generates two notable methodological choices: that of treating gender and age as important factors in the study of systems of punishment and that of combining small-scale, local realities with large-scale national and global ones. Gibson’s first contribution is to start a discussion about the chronology and geographical mapping of the accepted narrative concerning “the birth of the prison,” starting from an apparently peripheral viewpoint, that of late nineteenth-century Italy. Her introduction includes some short but pointed remarks on prison historiography (pp. 4–7), beginning with the so-called revisionist historians David Rothman, Michel Foucault, and Michael Ignatieff. Though fundamental, the work of these pioneers has been later criticized as presenting an oversimplified evolution from corporal punishment to penal incarceration based on the average adult-male prisoner. Gibson underlines the positive effect of Gender Studies in turning the attention towards prisons for women, as well as the usefulness of a broader approach to confinement practices during the Ancien Régime. From this perspective, the history of prisons in Italy appears much less isolated from the international landscape than could be thought at first. The book’s persuasive argument revolves around presenting the convergence on the Italian scene of three cultural currents that are crucial to understanding the success of the prison in modern penal systems. These aspects include the following: the traditional forms of confinement imposed by Catholics during the counterreformation; the revolutionary influence of Cesare Beccaria’s penal Enlightenment; and the interpretation of Positivism transpiring from the works on criminal anthropology by Cesare Lombroso. Following the Unification of Italy in 1861, such complex inheritance influenced the development of a “second wave of reform,” a phase that has been less intensely researched in previous scholarship, but that comes to the fore as central in Gibson’s book. During such a process of nation-building, Rome provides a case study within the larger Italian case study. Rome, being capital first of the Papal States and then of the Kingdom of Italy, is taken as a “laboratory” (p. 11) wherein the author retraces the politics of the liberal ruling class and party. The first chapter, “Punishment before Italian Unification,” deals with the Roman models of “proto-prison,” among which are the well-known examples of the Carceri nuove (1658) and of the Houses of Correction of San Michele a Ripa for children (1703) and women (1735) respectively. These new solutions supported by the popes received attention [End Page 708] from many contemporary observers and have been studied as early examples of cellular structures reflecting the internal activities of work and religious practice. Keeping in mind these significant beginnings, Gibson considers that the process of national unification marks a pivotal point in the passage from Rome’s leading role to that of other Italian regions that were more deeply imbued with the spirit of the Enlightenment. During the Risorgimento, in fact, experts, reformers, and Italian philanthropists participated in a European debate concerning the Auburnian and Philadelphian models of confinement, while both the Roman and the Neapolitan models were fiercely opposed. William Gladstone’s letters are one example of such open criticism (p. 43). Italian patriots considered prisons as an emblem of oppression by the Restauration’s rulers, while Liberals inherited the role of Enlightenment thinkers from the previous century in leading the fight for reform. Nonetheless, these nationalist movements met with failure...

The German Question in the Foreign Policy of the Austrian Empire in 1850—1866

For centuries, the House of Austria (the Habsburgs) maintained its leadership in the Holy Roman Empire, and later in the German Union. But in the middle of the 19th century the situation changed, Austria lost its position in Germany, lost to Prussia in the struggle for hegemony. The article examines what factors influenced such an outcome of the German question, what policy Austria pursued in the 50—60s of the 19th century, what tasks it set for itself. The paper traces the relationship between the domestic and foreign policy of Austria. Economic weakness and political instability prevented the monarchy from pursuing a successful foreign policy. The multinational empire could not resist the challenge of nationalism and prevent the unification of Italy and Germany. Difficult relations with France and Russia, inconsistent policy towards the Middle German states largely determined this outcome. The personal factor was also important. None of the Austrian statesmen could resist such an outstanding politician as Bismarck.

Itinerario nella monumentalità risorgimentale emiliano-romagnola tra spirito nazionale e identità locali

The essay analyses the statuary production representing the protagonists of the Italian Risorgimento in Emilia-Romagna and its role in the development of national identity. The statues and the busts dedicated to the Italian fathers of the nation and patriots allow us to highlight the regional peculiarities of the nation-building process. From this perspective, the article explores which interactions and initiatives have been affected by the dialogue between local history and national rhetoric.

Bono Malum Superate: long-run effects of radical institutional change

We examine the effect radical institutional change on long-run growth through the case of the partition of Friuli Venezia Giulia in 1947 between Italy and Yugoslavia and the subsequent integration in two distinct institutional regimes. Friuli Venezia Giulia's long-run development trajectory is matched through a novel dataset with other countries on pre-1947 growth and development characteristics, producing a plausibly exogenous source of variation in the absence of the unification. By using the long- run growth and development paths of other countries for the period 1871-2016, we construct a plausible counterfactual scenario, showing pervasive and substantial long-run growth benefits of Italian unification. In the absence of unification, Friuli Venezia Giulia's per capita income would be 41 percent lower and Yugoslav-controlled Littoral would have 32 percent higher per capita income if it had joined Italy. A battery of large- sample placebo distributions and permutation tests confirm the significance of the 1947 border partition for long-run economic growth.