British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
Giuseppe Mazzini and the Globalization of Democratic Nationalism 1805-2005
Abstract
Giuseppe Mazzini and the Emergence of Liberal Nationalism in the River Plate and Latin America
Jorge Myers, Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, CONICET, Buenos Aires
The purpose of this paper is to explore the complex reception and reinterpretation of the political thought of Giuseppe Mazzini in South America, in terms of its relationship to the emerging discourse of liberal nationalism in the region, from the 1830s to the 1880s. The impact of Mazzini's early writings in the River Plate on the leaders of the Argentine Romantic movement (1830-1852), initially organized politically into the 'Asociación de la Jóven Generación Argentina' (1838-42), shall be closely examined, as shall their circulation and uses within the burgeoning community of Italian exiles (Giuseppe Garibaldi, Giovanbattista Cuneo, Carlo Zucchi, to name only a few of its more celebrated members) in Montevideo and Buenos Aires with whom the Argentine and Uruguayan Romantic intellectuals forged strong ties. A second instance in which Mazzini's thought acquired a significant intellectual presence, in Chile during the 1840s, shall also be explored in relative detail, especially its contribution to the development of both a liberal and radical opposition to 'Pelucón'/Conservative party rule in Chile during the 1840s and early 1850s, culminating in the creation of the 'Sociedad de la Igualdad' (whose leaders were Francisco Bilbao and Santiago Arcos) and the abortive campaign for an expansion of the suffrage. The resurgence of interest in Mazzini's work which the revolutions of 1848 inspired shall also be briefly examined, with reference in this case to a wider Latin American context (Colombia, Brazil and Mexico, as well as Chile and the River Plate republics). Finally, the development of a 'subterranean' Mazzinian tradition during the period of liberal hegemony in Argentina (post-1852) shall be charted, with brief examinations of i) Francisco Bilbao's attempt to create a 'populist' (the term he himself employed) or popular liberal movement in that country during the late 1850s and early 1860s; of ii) the emergence in the 1860s and '70s of a significant republican press within the growing urban and working-class Italian immigrant collectivity; and of iii) the renewal of interest (after a period of relative eclipse) among Argentina's liberal political leaders sparked by the completion of Italian Unification in 1870 and Mazzini's death two years later. In closing, the paper shall allude to some further significant instances, in the later Nineteenth Century, of the deployment of arguments and topics drawn from Mazzini's work in the discourse of social and political movements elsewhere in Latin America (chiefly Colombia and Mexico).
The central interpretative theme of this paper shall consist in an emphasis on the fact that, despite its decisive importance in many specific instances - as in the adoption of the 'Giovine Italia' model by the leaders of the 1837 movement in Argentina, as in the frequent insistence (in the discourse of Francisco Bilbao, for example, during his campaign for an expanded suffrage in Chile) on the importance of a 'spiritualist' or anti-materialist framework for movements seeking social and political reform, or as in the emergence of a discourse concerning the possibility of creating a federal world government (contemplated in Alberdi's discourse on 'el Pueblo-mundo' in his remarkable text, El crimen de la guerra, written for presentation in an 1870 contest sponsored by the 'Ligue International de la Paix') - the political thought of Mazzini was almost always interpreted by his Latin American readers in terms of the wider ideological context of liberal, democratic or (sometimes) generically 'radical' movements of reform. The pattern of reception initiated in the 1830s - when his work was read in close (and eclectic) conjunction with that of other authors associated with Italian liberal opposition to the Restoration (such as Silvio Pellico and, on occasion, Alessandro Manzoni), as well as with that of French democratic Catholic (chiefly Lamennais in his post-L'Avenir phase), 'humanitarian' (Quinet and Michelet), and early socialist thought (chiefly Pierre Leroux) - continued to operate, albeit with other ideological components, in later years. Rather than discuss all the possible conjunctions with and overlaps between Mazzinian discourse and that of other intellectual currents operating in Nineteenth Century Latin America, this paper shall essentially attempt to tease out some of the more significant instances of its interaction with, and contribution to, the development of a liberal nationalist discourse and practice in the region.