Italian nationalism was a deeply divisive issue in both Britain and Ireland. While British evangelicals, radicals and liberals and (for a time) Irish nationalists embraced the Italian national struggle, many conservatives and most British and Irish Catholics stood opposed. This groundbreaking collection of essays explores the role of religion, politics, culture and the British-Irish semi-colonial relationship in shaping British and Irish reactions to Italian unification. In particular, it examines the nature and significance of transnational Mazzinian networks in Britain and Ireland during and after the Risorgimento, and the part played by Italian exiles in the construction of the 'Italian question' on both sides of the Irish Sea. It also analyses early British impressions of united Italy, and later Italian support for an 'Irish Risorgimento'.
This book offers a unique and fascinating examination of British and Irish responses to Italian independence and unification in the mid-nineteenth century. Chapters explore the interplay of religion, politics, exile, feminism, colonialism and romanticism in fuelling impassioned debates on the 'Italian question' on both sides of the Irish Sea.
"This book examines how a group of transnational British-Italian women affiliated with the exiled patriots of the Italian Left repurposed traditionally feminine activities, such as fundraising, gift-giving, maternity, and memory collection, to make a substantial contribution to Italian Unification and state-building. Through their actions, Mary Chambers, Sara Nathan, Giorgina Saffi, Julia Salis Schwabe, and Jessie White Mario transcended the boundaries of acceptable behavior for middle-class women and participated in the broader female emancipation movement. By drawing attention to their activities, this book reveals how nineteenth-century female activists achieved their most revolutionary goals by using conservative, domestic, or anti-Catholic language. Adding to the growing understanding of the Italian Risorgimento as a transnational phenomenon, it also shows how non-Catholic and non-Italian women participated in the creation and development of the Italian state. Finally, the book argues for the continuing importance of religion in both politics and philanthropy throughout the nineteenth century."
This book explores the interests of British leaders, diplomats and consuls in the unifying of Italy. It is the first study to provide a comprehensive narrative of British policy on Italian affairs between the formation of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861 and its consolidation as a new nation-state through the acquisitions of Venice in 1866 and Rome in 1870. Commencing with an investigation of the place of Italy within the context of mid-Victorian Britain’s global interests, the book investigates the origins of British sympathy for Italian nationalism during the 1850s, before charting the development of British foreign policy regarding Italy during its unification and consolidation. Emphasis is placed upon the tendency of British leaders and representatives to consider it their responsibility to guide the new Italy through its formative years, and upon their desire to draw Italy into a ‘special relationship’ with Britain as the dominant power within the Mediterranean.
This book examines Anglo-Italian political and cultural relations and analyses the importance of religion in the British 'Orientalist' perception of Italy. It puts religion at the centre of a harsh political and cultural war, one that was fought on international, diplomatic, and domestic levels.
This book examines the intersections among literary works by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Mary Shelley and Wilkie Collins, journalism, parliamentary records and pamphlets, to establish Britain's imaginative investment in the seismic geopolitical realignment of Italian unification.
Combining intellectual history, geography and political science, this book addresses the relations between geography and the federalist tendencies of key individuals during the nineteenth-century Italian Risorgimento. The book investigates the development of transnational federalist attitudes amongst a political network of intellectuals, and hones in on several understudied figures who played important roles in the Italian radical movements for national and social liberation. Notably, this includes political geographers who mobilised geographical metaphors to foster change and reorganise territories. The author demonstrates how federalism, anarchism and republicanism were all connected and led not only to autonomy in Italy, but more locally within its regions and municipalities, and more broadly across Europe over the ‘Long Risorgimento’ period. Contributing to current debates on federalism and anti-colonialism, this book will appeal to historical geographers, political scientists and those researching the history of federalism, republicanism and anarchism in Europe.
Modern Italian historiography has undergone a substantial revision in the last quarter of a century. From an almost exclusive focus on the process of nation-building, the attention of historians has shifted. The most innovative research is now devoted to assessing to what extent the cosmopolitan attitude that was evident in the late eighteenth century morphed, but did not disappear, in the ensuing two centuries. The essays in this volume make the case that the age of nations had a profound impact on Italian history and contributed to the creation of an Italian identity within the framework of well-functioning imperial and global networks. They also acknowledge that the process of national individualization carried with it a variety of aspects that reconnected Italian history to the foreign cultures that were undergoing constant self-fashioning. Cosmopolitan Italy in the Age of Nations: Transnational Visions from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century will be of interest to scholars throughout the world and intellectual and transnational historians.
With the rise of mass tourism, Italy became increasingly accessible to Victorian women travellers not only as a locus of artistic culture but also as a site of political enquiry. Despite being outwardly denied a political voice in Britain, many female tourists were conspicuous in their commitment to the Italian campaign for national independence, or Risorgimento (1815–61). Revisiting Italy brings several previously unexamined travel accounts by women to light during a decisive period in this political campaign. Revealing the wider currency of the Risorgimento in British literature, Butler situates once-popular but now-marginalized writers: Clotilda Stisted, Janet Robertson, Mary Pasqualino, Selina Bunbury, Margaret Dunbar and Frances Minto Elliot alongside more prominent figures: the Shelley-Byron circle, the Brownings, Florence Nightingale and the Kemble sisters. Going beyond the travel book, she analyses a variety of forms of travel writing including unpublished letters, privately printed accounts and periodical serials. Revisiting Italy focuses on the convergence of political advocacy, gender ideologies, national identity and literary authority in women’s travel writing. Whether promoting nationalism through a maternal lens, politicizing the pilgrimage motif or reviving gothic representations of a revolutionary Italy, it identifies shared touristic discourses as temporally contingent, shaped by commercial pressures and the volatile political climate at home and abroad.
Italian unification is one of the pivotal events in European history but the period leading up to Risorgimento has often been analysed in less detail. This book focuses on the history of the Italian states between 1815 and 1860 focusing on state institutions, international relations, economic and fiscal policies, living conditions and culture.
This edited collection offers the first systematic account in English of Italy’s international position from Caporetto – a major turning-point in Italy’s participation in the First World War – to the end of the liberal regime in Italy in 1922. It shows that after the ‘Great War’, not only did Italy establish itself as a regional power but also achieved its post-unification ambition to be recognised, at least from a formal viewpoint, as a great power. This subject is addressed through multiple perspectives, covering Italy’s relations and mutual perceptions vis-à-vis the Allies, the vanquished nations, and the ‘New Europe’. Fourteen contributions by leading historians reappraise Italy’s role in the construction of the post-war international order, drawing on extensive multi-archival and multi-national research, combining for the first time documents from American, Austrian, British, French, German, Italian, Russian and former Yugoslav archives.