Cosmopolitan Women, Philanthropy, and Italian State-Building, 1850-1890
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City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 2-2018 Transnational Nationalists: Cosmopolitan Women, Philanthropy, and Italian State-Building, 1850-1890 Diana Moore The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/2490 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] P a g e | i TRANSNATIONAL NATIONALISTS: COSMOPOLITAN WOMEN, PHILANTHROPY, AND ITALIAN STATE-BUILDING 1850-1890 by DIANA MOORE A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2018 P a g e | ii © 2017 DIANA MOORE All Rights Reserved P a g e | iii P a g e | iv ABSTRACT Transnational Nationalists: Cosmopolitan Women, Philanthropy, and Italian State-Building 1850-1890 by Diana Moore Advisor: Mary Gibson “Transnational Nationalists: Cosmopolitan Women, Philanthropy, and Italian State-Building, 1850-1890” is a study of Protestant and Jewish transnational reforming women who took advantage of a period of fluidity to act as non-state actors and impact Italian unification and liberation, a process known as the Risorgimento, and subsequent Italian state-building. Inspired by Giuseppe Mazzini’s spiritual brand of romantic cosmopolitan nationalism, as well as Giuseppe Garibaldi’s military campaigns, and believing that women had a god-given duty to provide education, morality, and uplift to oppressed groups, they worked to provide Italy not only with physical unification but also moral regeneration. Through an examination of their published and private works, I analyze how they publicized, fundraised, and conspired for the Risorgimento, and how they later worked to continue its legacy through biographical works, early childhood education, and the campaign against state-regulated prostitution. Through this, I challenge the boundaries between national and transnational, between the charitable and the political, and between public and private. P a g e | v Acknowledgements I could not have completed this dissertation on my own and I would like to take this time to thank the people who helped to make it possible. First off, I would like to thank my advisor, Mary Gibson, who has provided consistent guidance and support not only throughout the many phases and drafts of this project, but also throughout my development from a recent undergraduate student into an academic. I would also like to thank Kathleen McCarthy and the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society for supporting my work. To the other members of my dissertation committee: Timothy Alborn, Silvana Patriarca, and Francesco Bregoli, thank you for taking the time to read my work and for allowing me to benefit from the expertise you each have in your various fields of study. Thank you also to the members of our Italian History dissertation group, Francesca Vassale, Sultana Banulescu, Victoria Calabrese, and Davide Colasanto, for reading my chapters, even when they were long and messy, and for providing a community of support and so many models for me to emulate as a writer and scholar. To Jessica Strom, thank you for being such a support on my research trips and for engaging in the many discussions about obscure Risorgimento figures that only you and I would enjoy. Finally, thank you to all of the other professors and scholars along the way who helped to bring this project to completion. I am also grateful to the organizations and institutions who have financially supported my work and allowed for me to take various research trips to Italian archives and trips to conferences to hear helpful feedback on my work. I also want to thank all the staff, archivists, and librarians who assisted me during my research trips to Italy and helped me work through many different Italian bureaucratic systems. I would especially like to thank the Museo Centrale Risorgimento di Roma, the Archivio Museo Risorgimento di Milano, the Archivio Centrale dello Stato di Roma, the Biblioteca dell’Archiginnasio Bologna, and the Biblioteca di Storia Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome. Finally, to my parents, my husband, and all the other family and friends who have supported me during this journey, thank you so much for your love and understanding. I could not have done it without you. P a g e | vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Establishing Networks and Connections: Personal Relationships with Mazzini and Garibaldi 48 Chapter 2: The Fight for Italy: Actions Leading to Unification (up to 1860) 95 Chapter 3: The Fight for Venice, Rome, and Republicanism: 1861-1870 141 Chapter 4: Memorializing the Risorgimento: Shaping Historical Narratives 192 Chapter 5: A New Generation of Italians: Early Childhood Education 243 Chapter 6: New Civic Values in Marriage, Motherhood, and Sexual Relations 291 Chapter 7. Neither Catholic nor Italian: Issues of Citizenship, Religion, and Identity 336 Conclusion 385 Bibliography 393 P a g e | vii ABBREVIATIONS OF ARCHIVES ACS Archivio Centrale dello Stato di Roma BAB Biblioteca dell’Archiginnasio Bologna MCRR Museo Centrale Risorgimento di Roma MRM Archivio Museo Risorgimento di Milano P a g e | 1 Introduction A standard history of Italy in the second half of the nineteenth century divides the period into two halves: poetry and prose. The poetry period comprises the time of Italian Unification and rebirth, the Risorgimento, and historians emphasize its sense of possibility, hopes, dreams, and idealism. The following period of Liberal Italy is contrastingly termed an age of prose.1 Characterizing this as a period of harsh realities, historians emphasize how the first decades of the Italian state were marked by political conservatism, continuing poverty and economic instability, a struggling bureaucracy and parliament, and a lack of national unity, all stemming from the "failed" or "incomplete" revolution of the Risorgimento. This dissertation will provide an alternate narrative to this story and this division. The poetry-prose periodization comes from scholars focusing on the political, diplomatic, and military actions of Italian men. By focusing instead on transnational figures, women, left-wing revolutionary movements, social activism, and philanthropy, I show the continuity between those two periods and the elements of both idealistic dreaming and pragmatic realism present in each. The process of state creation evolved into the process of state building throughout the period from 1850 to 1890 with a limited distinction between the two. Throughout the process, non-state actors worked alongside and sometimes competed with state actors to reform the Italian 1 One example of this periodization is found in Christopher Duggan, The Force of Destiny: A History of Italy Since 1796 (London: Allen Lane, 2007). In his organization for the book, divides the period into “Part Three: Poetry, 1846-60,” and “Part Four: Prose, 1861-87.” See also, Fulvio Cammarano, Storia politica dell’Italia liberale: l’età del liberalismo classico, 1861-1901 (Roma: Gius. Laterza & Figli, 1999). Cammarano also contrasts the “poesie” of the Risorgimento with the “prosa” of the rule by the Right in Italy. P a g e | 2 peninsula and to create a new and better Italian state. The struggles of the Italian state to establish new national agencies and to govern and unite its citizens in the decades leading up to 1890 actually allowed for non-state agents to act in ways that they could not in the later period. I focus on a specific group of non-state agents, namely a group of transnational women who worked in both revolutionary and philanthropic campaigns in Britain and Italy from roughly 1850 to 1890. I examine how they used this period of Italian instability and fluidity to act as independent agents and to have an impact in shaping the course of the development of the Italian state. The main women of this study are: Jessie White Mario, Giorgina Craufurd Saffi, Sara Nathan, Julia Salis Schwabe, and Mary Elizabeth Chambers. All five of these women were living in Great Britain in the period before 1861 when they came into contact with exiled Italian patriots, most notably Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi, and became deeply involved in the fight for Italian unification and the reform of the Italian peninsula. These middle-class women used their education, status, and wealth, as well as the transnational networks and organizational lessons learned from their work in philanthropy and local charities, to participate in the Italian Risorgimento and involve themselves in Italian politics. During the struggle for unification they wrote and translated newspaper articles, gave lectures, raised funds, helped to plan conspiracies, and served as nurses for Garibaldi and his soldiers. Throughout the first decades of the Italian state, they then worked to facilitate the moral reform and regeneration of the Italian people by establishing primary schools, fighting against state-regulated prostitution, and working to ensure that the legacy and dream of the radical left lived on. White Mario, Saffi, Nathan, Schwabe, and Chambers were influential and important in their own time, but have been subsequently understudied and undervalued. It is the goal of this dissertation to more fully P a g e | 3 explore the lives, actions, and motivations of these women and, in doing so, to challenge our assumptions about the period of Italian unification and state-building. One of the major tasks of this dissertation is to provide a reevaluation of the Italian Risorgimento and the Liberal Era by showing how not only Italian men, but also non-Catholic and non-Italian women, participated in the creation and development of the Italian state. In doing so, I emphasize the transnational elements of national development, drawing attention to the ways in which the Italian state and sense of self were shaped by outside forces.