Introduction

Notes Introduction 1. The Piedmontese historian and political figure, Cesare Balbo (1789– 1853), cited in Antonella Gioli, Monumenti e oggetti d’arte nel regno d’Italia (Rome: Ministero per i Beni Culturali e Ambienti, 1997), 37. 2. Carlo Dionisotti, Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana (Turin: Einaudi, 1967), 285. 3. Richard C. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (New York: Academic Press, 1980). 4. The number of such studies has multiplied in recent years. The pio- neering and classic texts include Ilaria Porciani, La festa della nazione. Rappresentazione dello stato e spazi sociali nell’Italia unita (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1997); Bruno Tobia, Una patria per gli italiani. Spazi, itinerari, monumenti nell’Italia unita (Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1991); Umberto Levra, Fare gli italiani. Memorie e celebrazione del Risorgimento (Turin: Comitato di Torino dell’Istituto per la Storia del Risorgimento, 1992); Mario Baioni, La religione della patria. Musei e istituti del culto risorgi- mentale (Trevisto: Pagus, 1994); Mario Isnenghi ed., I luoghi della memoria. Personaggi e date dell’Italia unita (Rome: Laterza, 1997); Luciano Nasto, Le feste civili a Roma nell’Ottocento (Rome: Gruppo Editoriale Internazionale, 1994); Alberto Banti, La nazione del risorgimento. Parentela, sanità e onore alle origini dell’Italia unita (Turin: Einaudi, 2000); Axel Korner, Politics of Culture in Liberal Italy from Unification to Fascism (New York and London: Routledge, 2009); Alberto Banti and Roberto Bizzocchi eds., Immagini della nazione nell’Italia del Risorgimento (Rome: Carocci editore, 2002); Paul Arpaia, “Constructing a national Identity From a Created Literary Past,” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 7, no. 2 (August 2002):192–214. Maurizio Ridolfi, Le feste nazionali (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003); Cathrine Brice, “La Monarchia e la ‘religione della patria’ nella costruzione dell’idnetita nazionale,” Momoria e Ericerta 13 (May–August 2003): 140–147; Cristina della Coletta, World’s Fairs Italian Style. The Great Exhibitions in Turin and Their Narratives, 1860 -1915 (Toronto: University of Toronto 166 Notes Press: 2006). The turn towards culture in Risorgimento historiography is clearly outlined in a collection of essays edited by Alberto Banti and Paul Ginsborg, Storia d’Italia. Annali 22. Il Risorgimneto (Turin: Ainaudi, 2007). 5. Law number 2245 of administrative unification was passed on March 20, 1865. It addressed communal and provincial regulations, public secu- rity, public health, and public works. The laws on legislative Unification went into effect on April 2, 1865. They addressed all civil procedures, from marriage to commerce. 6. Filippo Sabetti, The Search for Good Government: Understanding the Paradox of Italian Democracy (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2000), 49. 7. For a discussion of the composition and politics of the Tuscan Liberal elite see Ernesto Ragionieri, “I moderati toscani e la classe dirigente italiana negli anni di Firenze capitale,” Paragone 6 (1965): 56–75; Raffaele Romanelli, “Urban Patricians and ‘Bourgeois’ Society: A Study of Wealthy Elites in Florence, 1862-1904,” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 1, no. 1 (1995): 4–35; Arnaldo Salvestrini, I moderati e la classe dirigente italiana 1859–1876 (Florence: Olschki, 1865); Zeffiro Ciuffoletti, “La vita politica e amministrativa,” in Giorgio Mori and Piero Roggi eds., Firenze 1815-1945: Un bilancio storiografico (Firenze: Le Monnier, 1990), 99–125. 8. The desire to accentuate local contributions to the formation of Italian national identity has remained strong despite the growth of the sepa- ratist movement in northern Italy. In a January 2000 regional law (n. 7135), Piedmont allocated one billion lire to the Museo Nazionale del Risorgimento Italiano “per la valorizzazione della tradizione risorgi- mentale piedmontese nel processo storico di costruzione dell’unità e dell’identità nazionale italiana”; in the website of Consiglio regionale del Piedmonte, http://csiultra.csi.it:8005/base/progetti/a7135a.html. 9. Ettore Socci, “Da Firenze a regione,” in Gaetano Trombatore ed., Memorialisti dell’Ottocento (Milan: R. Ricciardi, 1953), 588. 10. “siamo soli quassù ed io venero Dante come uno dei nostri profeti nazionali e mi unisco col amore laico! Amore che gli si rende”; BNCF, Sala Manoscritti, E. Peruzzi Diario, May 13–24, 1865, cc. 38v-41r. 11. BNCF, Sala Manoscritti, carte varie 27, 255, Fraticelli letter to Enrico Poggi, December 28 1864. 12. See chapter 4. For a discussion of the ideological foundations of the emergence of the stereotypes of the South in historiography, see the collection of articles in Schneider ed., Italy’s Southern Question. Orientalism in One Country (Oxford and New York: Berg, 1998). See especially the contribution by Nelson Moe, “The Emergence of the Southern Question in Villari, Franchetti and Sonnino”; Marta Petrusewicz, Come il Meridione divenne una Questione. Rappresentazioni del Sud prima Notes 167 e dopo il Quarantotto (Soveria Manelli: Rubettino, 1998). My find- ings support the recent revisionist historiography that question these longstanding stereotypes. For recent historical studies of the Italian South, see: John Davis, Naples and Napoleon: Southern Italy and the European Revolutions 1780-1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); Nelson Moe, The View From Vesuvius, Italian Culture and the Southern Question (Berkley: University of California Press, 2002). 13. See chapter 4. 14. Alberto Banti, Storia della borghesia italiana: L’eta liberale (Rome: Donzelli, 1996), 188; Marco Meriggi, Milano borghese. Circoli ed élites nell’Ottocento (Venice: Marisilio, 1992). 15. Marco Fincardi, “Le bandiere del ‘Vecchio Scarpone.’ Dinamiche socio- politiche e appropriazioni di simboli dallo stato liberale al fascismo,” in Fiorenza Tarozzi ed., Gli italiani ed il tricolore (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999), 208. 16. My argument supports and extends Christopher Duggan’s recent the- sis regarding the failures of the Italian monarchy to serve as a national symbol in the decade following the unification. Relating this “problem of the Monarchy” to the rise of nationalism, he argues that only after 1870s, the monarchy’s frailities became evident. Christopher Duggan, “Francesco Crispi, the Problem of Monarchy and the Origin of Nationalism,” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 15, no. 3 (2010): 336–353. For an overview of the complex role of the figure of monarchy in the Italian Unification, see Cathrine Brice, “La dinastis Savoia” in Mario Isnengi and Eva Cecchinato eds., Fare L’Italia: Unita e disunita nel Risorgimento (Turin: Unione Tipografico Editrice Torinese, 2008). 17. The Liberal historiography since the 1950s, beginning with the work of Denis Mack Smith, demystified the heroic actions of the leaders of the Italian national resurgence. It called into question the orthodoxy of attributing unification to a national aspiration for independence, free- dom, and national unity. Mack Smith focused on the political rivalry between moderation and radicalism, personified respectively in the fig- ures of Cavour and Garibaldi, during the years preceding unification. He explained unification more in terms of a dynastic-Piedmontese agenda, or political expediency, than in terms of a widespread national aspiration for independence; Denis Mack Smith, Cavour and Garibaldi: A Study of Political Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954); and The Making of Italy: 1796–1866 (New York: Walter and Company, 1968). The Marxist historiography of the Risorgimento began with, and continues to remain faithful to, Antonio Gramsci’s view of Italian unification as a “failed” or “passive” revolution. Gramsci blamed the failure of the Risorgimento on the incapacity of its leaders to provide leader- ship, and to create a revolutionary program with a wide-range national appeal. Given that the Risorgimento leaders increasingly isolated 168 Notes themselves from the populace, unification emerged as a movement of the elite, which was doomed to fail. It eventually yielded a permanent breach between the Italian state and civil society, as well as to political insta- bility and social disorder. For further study, see the collection of essays edited by John Davis, Gramsci and Italy’s Passive Revolution (London: Croom Helm, 1979). 18. This historical agenda of Liberal Italy is clearly articulated in a collection of essays edited by William Salomone, From Risorgimento to Fascism. An Inquiry into the Origins of the Totalitarian State (New York: Anchor Books, 1970). See also Richard Drake, Byzantium for Rome: The Politics of Nostalgia in Umbertian Italy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980). Drake argues that the profound disillu- sionment of Italians that emerged from the failure of the Italian government to fulfill the aspirations of the Risorgimento motivated both the politics and historiography of post-Risorgimental Italy. 19. For the contours of this “revisionist” historiography see John Davis, “Remapping Italy’s Path to the Twentieth Century,” Journal of Modern History 66, no. 2 (1994): 291–320; and Lucy Riall, The Italian Risorgimento: State, Society and National Unification (New York: Routledge, 1994). Lucy Riall’s updated work, Risorgimento: The History of Italy From Napoleon to Nation-state (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Riall’s “Guide to Further Reading” provides not only a valuable bibliography, but also a concise description of the recent inno- vations in and approaches to the study of Risorgimento. 20. Riall

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