Warfare, Taxation, and Political Change: Evidence from the Italian Risorgimento

We examine the relationships between warfare, taxation, and political change in the context of the political unification of the Italian peninsula. Using a comprehensive new database, we argue that external and internal threat environments had significant implications for the demand for military strength, which in turn had important ramifications for fiscal policy and the likelihood of constitutional reform and related improvements in the provision of non-military public services. Our analytic narrative complements recent theoretical and econometric works about state capacity. By emphasizing public finances, we also uncover novel insights about the forces underlying state formation in Italy

Two judicial postmortems that went awry 1870 & 1908

The first instance of an exhumation of a cadaver for a judicial post-mortem took place in 1870 in connection with a murder case. Knowledge, on the part of the pathologist, of the scene of the crime and of the events leading to the murder are important as they may suggest to the pathologist what to look for in the corpse, but only a thorough autopsy may reveal the cause of death. This is possible even after exhumation of a decomposed cadaver.peer-reviewe

The effectiveness of the international strategy in the analysis of the political language: Berlusconi´s speech at the chamber of deputies on the 13TH May 2008

In this context we will oversee to understand if and in which measure, the intentional attitude delineated today by the school of Anglo-Saxon thought and, in particular, by Dennett’s philosophy, can constitute an opportune and effective instrument for the analysis of the public language. With the expression “intentional system” we refer to the addressee of the communicative enterprise: a collectivity of people joined by the sharing a physical space and a temporal time; such a system can be explained, rationalized and, possibly, anticipated (as for its actions and to its behaviors) through the attribution to it of shared convictions and desires, which constitute the common sense of that organism. The so delineated philosophy of intentionality becomes, in this within, hermeneutics of the speech held by the then Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to the Chamber of Deputies on May, 13 2008, that is in occasion of the beginning of its IV legislature. The exposure of the former prime Minister insisted, in order to guarantee to his own government the necessary consent, on the baggage of convictions and desires shared by the Italians, in an historical moment of confusion and political-institutional instability. That speech evidenced proper values of the cultural and ideological matrix of Italy: the house, the family, the entrepreneurial increase of North, the elimination of the organized crime in the South, the tax reduction on the job of the entrepreneurs, individual safety, the removal of the material causes of the abortion. Such concepts were introduced in order to attract the interest of a conservative public opinion and to diverge the attention from the substance of that government’s action, that realized itself in a plan of drastic reduction of the job in Public Administration and of increase of the tax charge, in the picture of a progressive and general economic recess

Pier Luigi Nervi, bridge designer

“A bridge is for an engineer what a dome is for an architect”. The construction of a bridge is a central event in a professional life of an engineer. The symbolic value of such a structure, at the same time functional and iconic, is one reason. Moreover, bridge represent the perfect construction to test technological innovations, this can be seen by the fact that many pioneering engineers linked their names to ground-breaking bridges: Maillart, Hennebique and in recent times, Calatrava. Pier Luigi Nervi, one of the most acknowledged engineer of the twentieth century, famously built many domes but only one bridge, in Verona in 1965, he was 74. However, his interest for bridges was a constant in his professional life. Furthermore, other Nervi’s structures, like the elevated motorway in Rome, La Via Olimpica (1960) or even the suspended roof of the Burgo paper mill (1961) can be considered structurally similar to bridges. This paper presents some of Nervi projects of bridges, from the early designs to the what is generally considered his last effort, the Messina bridge. Particularly interesting are the discovery of two projects for such structures recently discovered in the Archivio Nervi in Rome. Two images of these projects are presented in this paper for the first time. They are just another evidence of the continuous investigation on suspended structures of the Italian engineer

'Our English visitors' : some British women in Malta during the nineteenth century

Recent historiography has challenged an exclusively male reading of empire. In Malta, however, the presence of British women has been generally limited to the philanthropic activities of the wives or widows of visiting dignitaries. While acknowledging the presence of these woman, the present writing concentrates upon the 'others', whether these were the middle class women born of British parents who engaged in a variety of activities, or the anonymous ones for whom the islands were a land of opportunity, or of despair. The elaboration of the subject is carried out in the awareness of the then-current realities which juxtaposed English, colonial mentalities against local, Italianate ones.peer-reviewe

Reading the Transformations of an Urban Edge: From Liberty Era Palermo to the City of Today

To honour the battle of 27 May 1860, in 1910 the Palermo City Government decided to realise a commemorative monument. A position at the centre of a large circular plaza was of have afforded the monument a greater solemnity. The commission for the Monument was awarded to Ernesto Basile. In 1927 the City Government decided to dedicate the monument to the Fallen and asked Basile to complete the monument adding an architectural backdrop. The first version of the new project was a fence that enveloped the entire square and the ring road, interrupted only by entrances near the streets flowing into the square, and dividing it into four sectors. The final design instead called for the realisation of a semi-circular exedra of columns interrupted at the centre by a large gate that allows access to the square and to the back of the monument. The successive development of the city engulfed the square in the midst of tall and anonymous buildings realised, beginning in the 1960s, without any order of relations, stripping the surrounding fabric of its identity. Through the survey of the today‘s configuration, the analysis of Basile‘s original drawings and the representation of the modifications made over time, this text proposes an original reading of the configuration of Piazza Vittorio Veneto and the Monument to the Fallen, in relation to important moments in its history, from its design to the present day. The three-dimensional models reproduce the monument and its surroundings at the time of its construction in 1910, based on the first version for its expansion (unbuilt), with the addition of the exedra from 1930 and in its current condition. The redesign and extrapolation of different views of the digital models also provided original images of use to new readings of the perception of this space

The Ibsenite Nature of Pirandello's Sicilianita and Joyce's Irishness : the cultures they fled, the contexts and metaphors that inspired them

Joyce's Irishness and Pirandello's Sicilianita (the Sicilian identity) seem to be negative ideas characterized by a sense of evasion and by an Ibsenite realism keen on unmasking the hypocritical Irish and Sicilian middle class society. Even though geographically distant, their Modernist Irishness and Sicilianita reveal quite a curious number of political, religious, linguistic, and social affinities: the stasis of the positive progress of history in Sicily and Ireland; the grudge towards foreign colonial rule (the AngloSaxon rule in Ireland, the neglect of Sicily by the Northern oriented governments in Rome); the self-induced exiles of both writers; the betrayal of their great political ideals (the fall of Parnell , the failed Irish initiatives for independence; the Roman Bank Scandal, the violent repression of the Fasci Siciliani revolution, the failures of the democratic governments); the stifling moral and political implications of a Catholic Ireland and a Catholic Sicily; the dilemmas of the Irish-English language in Ireland and the choice between the Standard Italian and the Sicilian dialects in Sicily. In this context, the cities of Dublin, Agrigento, and the sulphur depot port of Porto Empedocle in Sicily become claustrophobic landmarks which influence ontologically and existentially the two writers and their works. Both cultures attempt to cast over them not only the influence of an archaic heritage -the Celtic culture in Ireland and the Magna Graecia in Sicily -but also literary models which they end up refusing openly: Joyce denounces the Irish Literary Revival as promulgated by Yeats and Lady Gregory; Pirandello discards the position of the Sicilian Verismo masters like Giovanni Verga and Luigi Capuana. These issues are exposed in the Irish and Sicilian identities which Stephen Dedalus (both in A Portrait and in Ulysses), Don Cosmo, and Lando Laurentano (in the enigmatic novel I Vecchi e i Giovani) attempt to flee. Irishness and Sicilianita become not only 'a nightmare' from which Stephen is trying to awaken, but also a reality which 'does not conclude' according to Don Cosmo Laurentano, the exile who 'has understood the rules of the game'.peer-reviewe

Opera and Society, April 18 and 19, 2008

This is the concert program of the Opera and Society conference on Tuesday, April 18, 2008 and Wednesday, April 19, 2008, at the Marshall Room, 855 Commonwealth Avenue. Lectures were given by Cynthia Verba, Martin Pearlman, John Platoff, Sidney Friedman, Deborah Burton, Patricia Brauner, Helen Greenwald, Hilary Poriss, John A. Davis, and Gottfried Wagner. On Saturday, April 19 "The Barber of Seville" by Gioachino Rossini by the BU Opera Institute at the Boston University Theatre. Digitization for Boston University Concert Programs was supported by the Boston University Humanities Library Endowed Fund

Dante's Afterlife in Argentina

In the 1890s, Bartolomé Mitre (President of Argentina from 1862-1868) published a Spanish translation of the Divine Comedy that was as key to the diffusion of Dante in the Río de la Plata as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s English translation (1867) was in the U.S. This article examines Mitre’s motives for dedicating a decade of his life to the translation, as well as his mission to bring European (and specifically Italian) high culture to his fledgling nation. I have found Mitre’s reading of Dante to have important resonances with the readings of Risorgimento Italians such as Mazzini, who associated Dante with political unity, morality, and high culture. This study also examines Mitre’s role as an advocate of Italian immigration to Argentina

The Sicilian revolution of 1848 as seen from Malta

Following the Sicilian revolution of 1848, many Italian intellectuals and political figures found refuge in Malta where they made use of the Freedom of the Press to divulge their message of unification to the mainland. Britain harboured hopes of seizing Sicily to counterbalance French expansion in the Mediterranean and tended to support the legitimate authority rather than separatist ideals. Maltese newspapers reflected these opposing ideas. By mid-1849 the revolution was dead.peer-reviewe