British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
Giuseppe Mazzini and the Globalization of Democratic Nationalism 1805-2005
Abstract
Mazzini and the Garibaldian democratic tradition
Lucy Riall, Birkbeck College, London
In this paper I will focus on the popularisation and diffusion of Mazzini's idea of the nation. The recent work of Alberto Banti has shown the extent to which the idea of the nation in Risorgimento Italy was derived from a pre-existing set of symbols and metaphors, adapted and elaborated by romantic writers and painters in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Yet this idea of Italy lacked an effective political expression, and specifically there were few if any symbols of national belonging which tied Mazzini's revolutionary and democratic vision of Italy to the romantic imaginings of poets and artists. My paper looks at how the figure of Garibaldi was used to fill this gap. Concentrating on Garibaldi's own lifetime, it analyses the precise political message that Garibaldi was supposed to convey and at its impact. It also considers the means - notably, the press - by which the fame of Garibaldi and thus, indirectly, the Mazzinian vision of Italy was disseminated in Italy and elsewhere.