Saturday Showcase | February 23, 2019 | AskHistorians Archive Observer

Week 70

The experience of the short lived Italian revolutions of 1820-21, with the “constitutional” forces able to gain power with close to no resistance from their legitimate sovereigns, but defeated in a matter of weeks by the Austrian intervention, had certainly to determine a revision in the approach of the Italian “progressive” establishment (in addition to marking the political decline of the generation which had been directly involved in the Napoleonic administrations, either hit by the repressive measures of the legitimist forces, or by their own age). On one hand, the problem of a constitutional transformation – apparent as it had become that the Austrians were willing to intervene to prevent it, and strong enough to do so – had become entangled with that of the independence from the Austrians themselves (a fact which could not encourage the Austrians to tolerate such transformations), and how to achieve such independence against arguably preponderant forces. At the same time, this anti-Austrian war was rapidly gaining a “national” character; that is, to be conceived by and large no longer as a war to free the Italian States from the more or less direct foreign (or Austrian in particular) influence, but as a campaign that was the first step of the Italian unification (even if the concrete form of such unified Italy was far from agreed upon).

A similar conclusion had been reached – even if he insisted on his belief that the Italian revolution could succeed by its own strength – by the leader of the Piedmontese revolution himself, Santorre di Santarosa. In his 1821 memoir, La revolution piemontaise (published in Paris) he explained:

Italy, more than any other nation, is invested […] in the great question that makes Europe restless [because] she has at the same time to win her national existence and her internal freedom.

The revolution – he explained – had been necessary to prove

that the cause of freedom […] could not be defeated without a foreign intervention.

At the same time, it had been

the first attempted in Italy without the assistance or intervention of foreign powers; the first showing two Italian peoples who, from the opposite ends of the Peninsula answered to each other. It's result has been to fully enslave Italy to Austria – I am well aware of that; but mind you, Italy is conquered, but not subjugated. On the other hand, what was Italy before 1820? Wasn't she already enslaved to the Emperor of Austria if the Courts of Naples and Turin had committed to him [the King of Piedmont had not in fact contracted any official obligation – but Santarosa may have been led to believe otherwise by the Court themselves] to refuse their peoples the beneficial effects of political institutions? Our last misfortunes have done nothing but making our position simpler, more open our servitude, dragging into the light our shackles. O Italians! We can wear them, no need to shake them indecorously, but make it so that our hearts remain free!

Given the comparative weakness of the Italian forces though, such a campaign could only be victorious – in the minds of most of the Italian establishment – if it took place in precise connection with other international events. This connection-subordination of the Italian unification to the grand politics of the European Powers was a central element in the actual process of unification (and one the conscious exploitation of which has been credited, perhaps too generously, to the efforts of Cavour as Prime Minister of Piedmont); but it also mirrored a tendency of the last Jacobin republicans to conceive a constitutional affirmation in Italy as a consequence of a similar affirmation of the republican tendencies in France (echoing a tradition dating back to the Italian campaigns of 1796 – see for instance Filippo Buonarroti's petition letter to the French government). It was, of course, an element often conspicuously absent from the post-unitary narratives of the Italian Risorgimento, anxious to find evidence of a legitimate self-contained national experience to support the unity of the newly formed Kingdom, and perhaps at the same time overly concerned with the lack of it – so that they may very well have missed what the national experience occurring under the surface really was.

If this more practical point of view was to find vindication in the manner of the Italian unification, there was at least one notable and influential (despite the recurring practical failures) exception, that of Giuseppe Mazzini.

Mazzini had been born in Genoa – the son of a physician, Giacomo and of Maria, a woman of deep religious sentiments (of Jansenist inspiration, common among the local bourgeoisie) with a favorable outlook on the “national” matters, who continued to encourage, and support, her son's activities during his long period of exile – on June 22^nd 1805. He had been therefore too young to take part in the movement of 1820-21 and his first political experiences had taken place during the ten years of restoration, and especially after 1827, in the build up to the new insurrection of 1831, which took place mostly in the Papal States.

As usual given the climate of the time, this period of political formation – outside of the activities of private circles – took the form of participation to literary publications (Mazzini offered his, minor, contribution to the debate over romantic ideas during the 1820s), such as the Indicatore Genovese (active from May 1828 to December 1828 when it was suppressed by the Piedmontese Government) and the Indicatore Livornese (founded in the Tuscan port of Livorno by Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi on January 1829, and also suppressed in February 1830), as well as providing a few pieces for the more famous Florentine Antologia of Giovan Pietro Vieusseux.

This periodical, founded as the natural extension of the Literary-Scientific Cabinet opened in Florence by Vieusseux in 1819, was originally dedicated to the publication of translated excerpts of literary works; and due to its “literary” character and the somewhat moderate tendencies it embodied, it managed to survive for the relatively long period of twelve years (January 1821 to January 1833 – but the last issue appears to be that of late 1832). This moderate orientation did not prevent it from becoming a reference point for many Italian intellectuals dedicated, to different extents and under different fashions, to the “national” problem (and indeed circulation of the Antologia was discouraged within the Piedmontese Kingdom during the reactionary rule of Carlo Felice). Even if this problem (as customary) had often to be tackled from its more indirect and particular angles, such as problems of engineering, technology, agrarian techniques, finance and, of course, literature. Nor should one be led to overestimate the influence of the Antologia or other similar periodicals, nor their diffusion among the populace (by Vieusseux's own account, the Antologia counted 530 subscribers in 1829 – 323 in Tuscany, 35 in the Kingdom of Piedmont, 46 in the Lombard-Venetian Kingdom, 44 in the Papal States, and a few others here and there, notably more in France and GB than in Naples).

During its first three years of existence the “anthology” had operated – as the chosen name suggests – as a reader's digest, a collection, compiled largely by Vieusseux himself, which favored French contemporary studies (a fact which helped develop a certain interest towards the near east, broadly speaking, since at the time “orient” appeared to include the great Russia of Alexander I, the Ottoman Empire, Greece – the independence of which was a cause especially dear to Vieusseux), such as the works of Malte-Brun, Cuvier and Guizot. In this time, the main educational purpose of the periodical, aimed at a well learned elite, was clear and the relative position of politics within the context of this education project clarified by the original plan of a section of “moral and political sciences”, one of “literature”, one of “natural sciences”, one of “arts and craftsmanship”, one of “fine arts” (but, as we mentioned before, the formation of a moral conscience was generally not seen as alternative to that of a political conscience, rather a precondition of it).

With 1822 (and the growing influence of Gino Capponi, who during those years had resumed an old project of constitutionalization of the Tuscan State, and influenced Vieusseux towards the plan of a federation of the Italian States, submitted at the Congress of Verona in 1822) a few pieces begun to reveal a certain, less indirect, approach to political problems; especially with the growing interest towards the United States – sparked originally by the debate over the value of trade and commerce interconnections as a mean to promote social progress and civilization – resulting in the publication of a translation of an American review of C. Botta's “History of the American Revolution” [1809]. And the following year of a commentary on “the history, the customs, the tongue, of certain Indian nations of North America” (edited from the acts of the American Philosophical Society, Heckewelder, J. - Philadelphia 1819), which appeared more focused on the character and significance of unwritten languages in defining a national identity (and conversely, that of written language in keeping together a social, cultural and political unity).