Jongsma, J.

van Hout, M.

English

International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion online publications

UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl)UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository)Italian. Background: Historical context.§2: Risorgimento: Italian political nationalismvan Hout, M.; Jongsma, J.Publication date2018Document VersionOther versionPublished inEncyclopedia of Romantic Nationalism in EuropeLicenseCC BY-NC-SALink to publicationCitation for published version (APA):van Hout, M., & Jongsma, J. (2018). Italian. Background: Historical context. §2: Risorgimento:Italian political nationalism. In J. Leerssen (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Romantic Nationalism inEurope (Vol. 2, pp. 1129-1131). Amsterdam University Press.http://ernie.uva.nl/viewer.p/21/56/object/122-159248General rightsIt is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s)and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an opencontent license (like Creative Commons).Disclaimer/Complaints regulationsIf you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, pleaselet the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the materialinaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letterto: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Youwill be contacted as soon as possible.Download date:24 Jan 2024http://ernie.uva.nl/viewer.p/21//object/122-159248Encyclopedia of Romantic Nationalism in EuropeRisorgimento: Italian political nationalismAuthor: Hout, Milou van Jongsma, JudithAt the end of the 18th century the peninsula that from 1860 would be called the Kingdom of Italy was fragmentedin many autonomous regions and city states. The northern regions were under Habsburg rule, the central partconsisted of the Papal States, and the southern Kingdom of Naples was ruled by the Bourbons. After theNapoleonic invasion of 1796 political conditions changed rapidly. The Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy was proclaimedin the former Habsburg territories in 1805, Rome annexed in 1808, and Naples ruled by a French general. Thedefeat of 1813 restored the status quo ante, with the Habsburg Empire annexing Lombardy, Veneto, Istria andDalmatia. This restoration, and the reactionary policies of the restored regimes, left popular discontent, resulting inpopular uprisings that marked the beginning of the Italian unification process, the Risorgimento. (The term refers tothe political process of creating a united nation-state as well as to the struggle for resurrection (risveglio) of thespirit of the Italian people.)Several secret societies worked towards an independent and united Italy, the most important being the Carbonari(“charcoal makers”). This network of revolutionaries, inspired by the Freemasonry and the French Revolution,strongly opposed the conservative political changes and aimed at creating a constitutional republic. They initiatedthe Southern revolutions of 1820-21 and demanded liberal reforms. They succeeded to the extent that KingFerdinand I of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies signed a liberal constitution based on the model of the SpanishConstitution of 1812. Alarmed by the progress of the Carbonari the Holy Alliance and the newly appointed King ofSardinia Charles Felix sent their armies and defeated the Southern insurgents. In 1831 the Carbonari membersstaged a revolution in Modena and in several cities in the Papal States.After being defeated by the Habsburg army, the Carbonari practically ceased to exist. In 1831 a former member ofthe Carbonari, Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872) founded a new association, Giovine Italia (“Young Italy”). Contraryto the Carbonari, Giovine Italia enunciated a clear programme stating its aim to unify Italy, and spread this throughpropaganda and education. Mazzini’s movement failed, however, to mobilize the biggest social group on the Italianpeninsula, the peasants, since, fixated as he was on national unification, Mazzini neglected the importance ofsocial reforms for the peasantry. More moderate movements for constitutional reform appeared as well, such as the neoguelfi and the neoghibellini(who took their names from the medieval factions in the power struggle between Pope and Emperor). Theneoguelfi were led by Vincenzo Gioberti (1801–1852), and strongly supported the Pope, whom they consideredthe moral, spiritual and political guide towards a united Italy. The neoghibellini favoured a unitary republican stateand regarded the church as an obstacle.The revolutions of 1848 manifested themselves in Italy with insurrections in Venice, Milan, Tuscany, Naples andSicily. They also led to the First War of Independence, between the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the HabsburgEmpire. The war did not turn out well for the Risorgimento insurgents; after several battles the political situationremained unchanged. The Risorgimento dream nevertheless survived into the following decade, with CountCavour (1810–1861) emerging as an important political leader in the call for Italian independence. As instigator ofthe Second War of Independence, which began in 1859, Cavour managed to find an ally in Napoleon III. This war,too, failed to achieve a unified and independent Italy. Infuriated about this, Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–1882), anative from Nice, marched, together with thousand volunteers (known as le camicie rosse), to Sicily on 6 May1860. He managed to take control of that island, which proved the first step of the definitive unification of Italy.When Rome and Venice joined Italy in 1870, the political unification of the newborn state was completed. Theposition of national capital, which had initially been Turin’s (1861) and then Florence’s (1865), was now given toRome. The Pope in protest declared himself prisoner in his Vatican palace adjoining St Peter’s Basilica, creating aEncyclopedia of Romantic Nationalism in Europe | Public Interface | ... http://ernie.uva.nl/viewer.p/21/56/object-print/122-1592481 of 2 9-5-2018 15:20constitutional deadlock not resolved until the Vatican was declared a sovereign state under the Lateran Treaty(1929).The Risorgimento, opposing as it did the power of the Papacy and the Habsburg Empire, was followed withsympathy in Britain and Germany, and had an inspiring effect elsewhere in Europe, not least among nationalitieswith links to the Italian-based intellectuals: Albanian, Maltese. Conversely, Catholics in various countries weremobilized for papal support in widespread ultramontanist movements, strengthening the confessionalization ofpolitics in countries like Ireland, France and the Netherlands.The independent Italy that was established in 1861 was not, as Mazzini and Garibaldi had envisaged, a Republic,but a Kingdom, as a successor state to the Kingdom of Sardinia; this was done so as not to antagonize theEuropean monarchies, but embittered Mazzini; Garibaldi was especially aggrieved by the cession of his nativeNice to France in requital for that country’s acquiescence. Following the political establishment of the Kingdom ofItaly, the writer and statesman Massimo D’Azeglio famously declared in 1861 that an Italian Kulturnation nowneeded to be created (“we have made Italy, now we must make Italians”). The Southern Question, which dealt withthe socio-economical and political backwardness of the Italian southern provinces, only increased the experienceof an incomplete unification. The creation of a unified nation was pushed forward by cultural-political processessuch as the creation of a national historiography, celebrating key figures from the Risorgimento (Mazzini, Garibaldi,and, later, Gabriele D’Annunzio) as national heroes.The process of redefining and strengthening Italy’s national identity also turned into a quest for the terre irredente(“unredeemed territories”), the ethnically related regions outside the Italian state borders that needed to beredeemed from foreign (Austrian) rule. The ideology and movement of irredentismo aimed at territorial liberation ofTrentino-Alto Adige, Istria and Dalmatia (and also struck a sympathetic chord among the Italophile elite of Malta).These regions had historical ties with the Risorgimento and were considered to be Italian in character; this madethe struggle for their redemption also a national-regenerative revolution.The Romantic Nationalist aspirations of the 18th and 19th century Risorgimento project intermingled in the early20th century with a more modernist form of nationalism, present for example in the writings and political discoursesof the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio (who combined post-Romantic aestheticism and Nietzschean titanism in his ownwriting). From the late 19th into the early 20th century, the cultural and geopolitical struggle of Italian irredentism,together with the celebration of war experiences by Italian avant-gardist circles in the years towards and during theGreat War, gave new impetus to the quest for the regeneration of a national Italian identity. It was this context of amelting pot of Romantic and modernist experiences of nationalism that created an opening for the foundations of afascist ideology and regime.Gentile, Emilio; 2009. La grande Italia: The myth of the nation in the twentieth century (transl. Suzanne Dingee, Jennifer Pudney London:U of Wisconsin P)Leoni, Francesco; 2001. Storia dei partiti politici italiani (Naples: Alfredo Guida) [“History of Italian political parties”]Patriarca, Silvana, Lucy Riall; 2012. The Risorgimento revisited: Nationalism and culture in nineteenth-century Italy (Basingstoke: PalgraveMacmillan)Rial, Lucy; 1994. The Italian Risorgimento: State, society, and national unification (London: Routledge)All articles in the Encyclopedia of Romantic Nationalism in Europe edited by Joep Leerssen are licensed under a Creative CommonsAttribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.spinnet.eu.© the author and SPIN. Cite as follows (or as adapted to your stylesheet of choice): Hout, Milou van, Jongsma, Judith, 2017.“Risorgimento: Italian political nationalism”, Encyclopedia of Romantic Nationalism in Europe, ed. Joep Leerssen (electronic version;Amsterdam: Study Platform on Interlocking Nationalisms, www.romanticnationalism.net), article version 1.1.2.1/a, last changed23-11-2017, consulted 09-05-2018.Encyclopedia of Romantic Nationalism in Europe | Public Interface | ... http://ernie.uva.nl/viewer.p/21/56/object-print/122-1592482 of 2 9-5-2018 15:20

Italian. Background: Historical context.:§2: Risorgimento: Italian political nationalism

https://pure.uva.nl/ws/files/24936077/Encyclopedia_of_Romantic_Nationalism_in_Europe_Public_Interface_Encyclopedia_of_Romantic_Nationalism_in_Europe.pdf

Italian. Background: Historical context.:§2: Risorgimento: Italian political nationalism

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion online publications