Risorgimento in Exile: Italian Émigrés and the Liberal International in the Post-Napoleonic Era

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RISORGIMENTO IN EXILE

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Risorgimento in Exile ´ Italian Emigr´ es and the Liberal International in the Post-Napoleonic Era M AU R I Z I O I S A B E L L A

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Maurizio Isabella 2009

The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2009 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Isabella, Maurizio. Risorgimento in exile : Italian e´migrés and the liberal international in the post-Napoleonic era / Maurizio Isabella. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–19–957067–6 (alk. paper) 1. Italy—History—1815–1870. 2. Italy—Emigration and immigration—Political aspects—History—19th century. 3. Exiles—History—19th century. 4. Liberalism—History—19th century. 5. Cosmopolitanism—History—19th century. 6. Intellectuals—Italy—History—19th century. 7. Political culture—Italy—History—19th century. 8. Patriotism—Italy—History—19th century. 9. Italy—Relations—Great Britain. 10. Great Britain—Relations—Italy. I. Title. DG552.6.I75 2009 320.54094509’034—dc22 2009016799 Typeset by Laserwords Private Limited, Chennai, India Printed and bound in the UK on acid-free paper by MPG Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 978–0–19–957067–6 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

In loving memory of Anna Lidia Barutta Isabella, Pacifico Isabella, Bianca De Amici Personeni, and Ercole Personeni, who told me where I come from.


Contents Acknowledgements List of abbreviations

ix xi

Introduction Who were the exiles? From Napoleonists to Revolutionaries

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PA RT I : A L I B E R A L I N T E R N AT I O N A L ? T H E I TA L I A N E X I L E S A N D T H E WO R L DW I D E S T RU G G L E F O R FREEDOM 1. A Liberal International: Simultaneous Revolutions and the Birth of a Transnational Civil Society

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2. The Spanish Revolution and European Freedom

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3. In Search of New Models of Heroism: Revolutionary Leadership and Democratic Federalism in Spanish America Introduction Engaging in the politics of the Mexican revolution Conclusions

42 42 51 60

4. Greece and the Regeneration of the Mediterranean Introduction Ugo Foscolo, the Ionian Islands, and Parga’s cession Italian and English philhellenisms at odds: national project or civilizing mission? Italy and Greece as Mediterranean sisters The legacy: Santorre di Santarosa and the making of a philhellenic icon Conclusions

65 65 70 75 82 85 89

5. Cosmopolitan Patriots: Freedom and Civilization as Global Processes 92 Introduction 92 Civilization as a global phenomenon 96 Re-establishing the balance of power in Europe 99 Towards a Kantian understanding of the international order 104 Conclusions 106

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Contents PA RT I I : E N G L A N D A N D I TA LY C O M PA R E D

6. English Institutions and Italian Freedom Introduction ‘Naturally free’: English national character and society English politics: parties, elections, and institutions Keeping the Catholic Church at bay: exile liberalism and the Irish Question The shortcomings of English political life Can freedom be exported? The English Constitution, foreign models and Italian freedom Conclusions: exile liberalism, Anglophilia, and the Risorgimento 7. Assessing English Commercial Society Introduction Giuseppe Pecchio’s ‘scienza dell’amor patrio’ Addressing poverty in a commercial society: Giovanni Arrivabene, charitable institutions, and the reform of the Poor Laws Towards republican commercial societies: GianBattista Marochetti and the defence of virtue Conclusions 8. Narrating the Risorgimento to the English Public Auto-ethnography and the Risorgimento: responding to the Grand Tour Influencing English perceptions of the Italian question Conclusions Epilogue From Political Defeat to Memory Conclusions Exile and national consciousness Exile and the Risorgimento Biographical Appendix Bibliography Index

111 111 117 122 129 134 137 146 151 151 159 169 177 182 186 186 202 208 213 213 222 222 226 231 245 273

Acknowledgements This book has been a long time in the making. Its origins may be traced back to a suggestion made many years ago by Carlo Capra, who proposed that I study the ideas of the Lombard exile and economist Giuseppe Pecchio; Carlo Capra has been a source of intellectual guidance ever since. It was under the very generous and caring supervision of Derek Beales, who warmly welcomed me to Cambridge when I was still an undergraduate, that this same topic became the focus of my PhD dissertation at Sidney Sussex College. These two scholars taught me how to do research, and their intellectual rigour has always been a source of inspiration. After a number of years in the wrong career, I decided to return to historical research and to broaden the scope of my original investigation in order to produce a collective intellectual biography of the generation of Risorgimento patriots who went into exile during and after the collapse of the Napoleonic regime in Italy. Perhaps all historians tend to identify too closely with the object of their enquiry, at the expense of maintaining a critical, detached attitude. Having myself spent most of my adult life in voluntary exile in a number of different countries, I have no doubt looked at these e´migrés with indulgence and with a measure of sympathy for the adventurous and eccentric nature of their lives. My own experience may, however, have helped me to understand the ambivalent emotions that anybody living far from home feels for both the country of origin and the host country. Indeed, the most striking attribute of these exiles was their cosmopolitanism, an aspect of their thought that was first grasped by Franco Venturi and Alessandro Galante Garrone. It is the openness and the generosity of their vision of the Risorgimento that I hope is vindicated in this book, which also seeks to challenge the idea of exceptionalism that still haunts Italian historiography. Throughout these years, a great number of people have given me help and advice, and it is a pleasure to call them to mind. In particular, I wish to thank John Davis and Gareth Stedman Jones, who examined my PhD dissertation, Jonathan Steinberg, Paschalis Kitromilides, Emma Rothschild, Christopher Duggan, and Silvana Patriarca. Eugenio Biagini, a fellow exile, convinced me of the importance of looking at Italian history in a broad European framework. He also suggested the title of the book. I would never have completed the book without the encouragement and friendship of Lucy Riall and David Laven: they know how much I owe them. Gilles Pécout told me about philhellenism and volunteers. Many discussions with Gianluca Albergoni and Axel Körner helped me to clarify several aspects of my research. John Davis’s response to my paper at the Anglo-American Conference in July 2008 did much to sharpen the focus of my arguments. Lucy Riall, David Laven, Carlo Capra, and Martin Thom read and provided detailed comments on the first draft of the book, offering me much guidance

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Acknowledgements

and sparing me very many mistakes. Besides sharing with me his exceptional knowledge of European intellectual history, Martin Thom did much to clarify my thoughts and improve my style. Roberto Romani, to whom I owe all I know about economic thought, and Georgios Varouxakis carefully read the chapters on England, the introduction and conclusions. Georgios Varouxakis has been generous with me in more ways than I am able to record here, but I should at least mention his infectious enthusiasm. Brian Hamnett commented on the sections regarding Spanish America. Konstantina Zanou made helpful observations regarding my chapter on philhellenism. The final shape of the book has taken into account the valuable insights of the anonymous referees at OUP, all of whose highly constructive criticism was justified. None of the above is responsible for my mistakes. An earlier version of Chapter 5 was published as ‘Mazzini’s Internationalism in Context: From the Cosmopolitan Patriotism of the Italian Carbonari to Mazzini’s Europe of the Nations’, in C. A. Bayly and E. Biagini (eds), Giuseppe Mazzini and the Globalisation of Democratic Nationalism 1820–1920 (Oxford, 2008), pp. 37–58. The section of Chapter 7 devoted to Giuseppe Pecchio’s economic writings represents a revised version of my ‘ ‘‘Una scienza dell’amor patrio’’: public economy, freedom and civilization in Pecchio’s works (1827–1830)’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 4 (1999), 157–83. A number of institutions have financed and made this research possible. In particular, I wish to thank Sidney Sussex College; the Fondazione Einaudi in Turin; the Centre for the Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, Cambridge (and in particular Ludmilla Jordanova and John Morrill); the School of History, Classics and Archaeology of Birkbeck College, London, which granted me a Research Fellowship, and in particular Julian Swann; the Programme in Hellenic Studies at Princeton University, where I was elected to a Stanley J. ´ cić and Dimitri Gondicas; Seeger Fellowship and welcomed by Slobodan Curˇ the Arts and Humanities Research Council; last, but not least, the Department of History, Queen Mary College. During my research trips in many countries I benefited from the generous hospitality and good company of many friends: in Italy Antonella Olgiati, Francesco Lucietti, Roberto and Cristina Casati, Giancarlo Zulian and Alessandro Cannavò; in Brussels Icaro Alba and Sylvain Pasqua; in Cambridge Anita Budd, Sibyl Mager, Nicholas Jackson, Judy and Neil Swan, Andreas Bucker, Anthony Nicholson, Alessandra Tosi and Rupert Gatti; in London Birgit Boyo, Victor Buchli, Romina Vegro, Ludwig and Christie Sels. Finally, my greatest moral debt is to my family. Andrea, Laura, Matteo, and Linda were a great source of strength and happiness. My parents Graziella and Duilio never ceased to believe in my ability to finish this project, even when I myself doubted. They have always been my greatest supporters. In taking leave of this book, however, my thoughts are with those who are no more. London and Portovaltravaglia, December 2008

List of abbreviations ANP

Archives Nationales, Paris

AST

Archivio di Stato, Turin

BNB

Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, Milan

Il Caffè

Il Caffè 1764–1766, ed. G. Francioni and S. Romagnoli (Turin, 1993)

CNRA

Centre for Neohellenic Research, Athens

Il Conciliatore

Il Conciliatore (1818–19), ed. V. Branca, 3 vols (Florence, 1948–54)

EN

U. Foscolo, Edizione Nazionale delle opere di Ugo Foscolo, 22 vols (Florence, 1933–94)

GSAA

General State Archives, Athens

HSA

The Hispanic Society of America, New York

LP

Lafayette Papers, Series III, Correspondence

MRM

Museo del Risorgimento, Milan

NLW

National Library of Wales, Cardiff

SEI

G. Mazzini, Scritti Editi ed Inediti, 94 vols (Imola, 1906–43)

SP

G. Pecchio, Scritti Politici, ed. P. Bernardelli (Rome, 1978)

V-AA

Visconti-Arconati Archive, Gaasbeek, Belgium

Thus, seen from Europe, the Risorgimento seems to grow in stature, does not appear ‘derivative’, or a more or less provincial ‘imitation’, but rather like the most complete fulfilment of the tendencies of the century. Franco Venturi, ‘Sul Risorgimento’, Giustizia e Libertà, [1935]

Introduction A biographical sketch published in 1860 stated that Ugo Foscolo, by quitting Milan, ‘gave Italy a new institution: exile’.¹ By then exile was perceived as a defining feature of Italy’s recent history both at home and abroad. Indeed, a year before the appearance of the above-mentioned article, the Parisian Revue des Deux Mondes had claimed that ‘Exile is almost a national tradition on the other side of the Alps [. . .] a normal and perennial predicament in Italy.’² Between 1799 and 1860 exile was a phenomenon which affected a significant section of the Italian educated classes, if not in quantitative terms, then in terms of the importance that this group of exiled intellectuals had in Italy and continued to have abroad in the creation of a national movement and a national identity. The close link between the development of Italian nationalism and exile stems from the fact that the political and intellectual activities that underpinned the Italian national movement developed primarily beyond the borders of the Italian states. The experience of emigration was crucial to the manner in which the Italian national community was imagined, at a time when certain important political discussions could be conducted only outside of Italy. The product of an expatriate community with close ties with its homeland, developing a mythical vision of it along with a commitment to go back ‘when the time is right’, the Risorgimento was one of many diasporic nationalisms to have flourished in modern times.³ This book is about exile as an intellectual experience. It explores the impact of emigration on those who left Italy with the collapse of Napoleonic rule in 1814 and following the revolutionary wave of 1820–1, and the impact of these e´migrés on Risorgimento political culture and identity. It uses a wide range of texts, published and unpublished, produced outside Italy. It also aims to locate the development of this culture in the context where it was originally produced, that is to say as part of the European and transatlantic debates taking place at the time. ¹ C. Cattaneo, ‘Ugo Foscolo e l’Italia’ [1860], in idem, Scritti letterari, ed. P. Treves, 2 vols (Florence, 1981), i, 496–555, 536. ² C. de Mazade, ‘Une Vie d’émigré Italien’, Revue des Deux Mondes, 29 (1859), 460–76, at 460. ³ A definition of diaspora is in W. Safran’s ‘Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return’, Diaspora, 1 (1991), 83–99.

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Risorgimento in Exile

Political emigration represents a classic theme of Risorgimento historiography. As I have argued elsewhere, its study among later generations of Italian historians was characterized until recently by a remarkable discursive continuity with the myths and representations produced by the Risorgimento exiles themselves, which linked exile to freedom and patriotism, associated it with notions of martyrdom and sacrifice, and described the entire Risorgimento as a struggle by exiled patriots towards the establishment of the Italian state.⁴ With the noteworthy exception of Alessandro Galante Garrone, Salvo Mastellone, and Franco Venturi, whose antifascism encouraged a cosmopolitan and European interpretation of the Risorgimento in the post-war years, historiography by and large ignored any migration of ideas from the host country into Italian thought by way of the exiles, thus ‘decontextualizing’ it from the milieu in which it was originally conceived.⁵ In discussing political emigration, priority was given to the ideological battles within the national movement abroad, without much attention to the more immediate context.⁶ In addition, assessments of the generation of exiles discussed hereafter were affected by long-held prejudices about their political culture and the nature of the uprisings they had organized. In the wake of Risorgimento moderates like Silvio Spaventa, historians condemned the 1821 revolutionaries for their ‘abstractness’, because in advocating foreign constitutions they had failed, like the Neapolitan revolutionaries in 1799, to understand that political institutions needed to be adapted to the culture and the expectations of the people.⁷ Since the 1830s, Giuseppe Mazzini’s dismissive opinion of the 1820 revolutionaries’ political thought and inadequate revolutionary strategies further contributed to their oblivion. Then, in the 1980s, through a shift in historiography, political emigration ceased to be a central topic of Risorgimento studies. The historiographical agenda progressively moved away from nationalism to concentrate on institutions and society. As doubts were expressed about the connection between nationalism and unification, historians abandoned the study of political struggles, ideologies, and revolutions, denied their relevance to our understanding of the Risorgimento, and preferred instead to discuss the relations between institutions and society. ⁴ M. Isabella, ‘Exile and Nationalism: The Case of the Risorgimento’, European History Quarterly, 36 (2006), 493–520. ⁵ A. Galante Garrone, ‘L’emigrazione politica italiana nel Risorgimento’ and F. Venturi, ‘La circolazione delle idee’, both in Rassegna storica del Risorgimento, 41 (1954), 203–22, 223–42; S. Mastellone, Victor Cousin e il Risorgimento italiano (Florence, 1955); A. Galante Garrone, Filippo Buonarroti e i rivoluzionari italiani (1828–1837) [1951] (2nd edn, Turin, 1975). ⁶ A complete bibliography can be found in M. A. Fonzi Columba, ‘L’emigrazione’, in Bibliografia dell’età del Risorgimento, 4 vols (Florence, 1972), ii, pp. 425–69; G. Ciampi, ‘L’emigrazione’, in L. Balsamo (ed.), Bibliografia dell’età del Risorgimento, 1970–2001, 3 vols (Florence, 2003), ii, pp. 1179–209. ⁷ S. Spaventa, ‘Della riazione del governo di Napoli considerate nei suoi effetti’, in idem, Dal 1848 al 1861: lettere, scritti e documenti, ed. B. Croce (Naples, 1898), p. 144. B. Croce, Storia del Regno di Napoli (Bari, 1925), pp. 235–8. Similar ideas appear in C. Ghisalberti, Istituzioni e societá civile nell’eta del Risorgimento (Bari 2005), p. 9.

Introduction

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According to this new methodological approach, it was neither nationalism nor liberalism, but rather the increasing disaffection or even hostility of the elites towards the Restoration regimes that accounted for their support for independence from Austria or for the Piedmontese leadership in the peninsula. In other words, the elites’ concerns about the weakness of the Restoration states, which seemed unable to protect them from social unrest, or their determination to resist the centralizing reforms of the states, made the Risorgimento an appealing option. The teleological narration of the Risorgimento, which interpreted all patriots’ intentions and actions as a pre-figuration of 1860, and viewed unification as a direct consequence of nationalism, was thus abandoned once and for all. With it faded interest in political emigration. However, in the last ten years the study of Italian national identity in the Risorgimento has revived. Under the influence of the new cultural history, the importance of ideas in driving social movements and political changes has again been acknowledged, but without reverting to the old nationalist agenda.⁸ This renewed interest in the intellectual and cultural nature of the Risorgimento is primarily due to Alberto Banti’s groundbreaking research into the nature of Risorgimento discourse. According to Banti, the understanding of the nation in the Risorgimento was shaped by a set of narratives, metaphors, and literary images affecting both the self-fashioning of Italian patriots and the imagination of those who read a large number of literary texts that Banti defines as the ‘Risorgimento canon’. For Banti, unless we take into account the symbolic and emotional power of such a language we cannot hope to explain the political mobilization stimulated by the idea of nation during the Risorgimento, one based on a metaphorical association with the natural ties of family or the land, shared across the ideological spectrum by all patriots alike.⁹ Interest in the intellectual and political dimension of the Risorgimento has been further stimulated by a partial revision of its traditional ideological categories. Whether under the influence of the linguistic turn, or as a result of a new interpretation of the French Revolution, traditional Marxist categories such as Risorgimento democracy and moderate liberalism have been challenged and partly revised. According to these categories, which dominated Italian historiography until recently, the Jacobin Filippo Buonarroti, a supporter of Robespierre, represented the central figure of Risorgimento democracy; those who did not conform to his political ideas were deemed to be ‘moderate’ and anti-revolutionary. In addition, Marxist historiography considered Risorgimento liberalism as anti-revolutionary, socially conservative, and hostile both to the ideas and to the social and economic development—industrialization, the growth of ⁸ A useful discussion of the historiography is in L. Riall, Risorgimento: The History of Italy from Napoleon to Nation State (London, 2009), pp. 117–46. ⁹ Banti, La nazione del Risorgimento: Parentela, santità e onore alle origini dell’Italia unita ( Turin, 2000), and more recently his L’onore della nazione: Identità sessuali e violenza nel nazionalismo europeo ( Turin, 2005).

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the working classes and the rise of liberal democracy—taking place in northern Europe. Such an interpretation owed much to Antonio Gramsci’s notion of the Risorgimento as a ‘failed bourgeois revolution’. According to Gramsci the democratic leaders of the Risorgimento, in contrast to their counterparts in the French Revolution, the Jacobins, did not forge alliances with the masses but rather with the local aristocracies and landed elites, whose conservative interests prevailed in the construction of the Italian state.¹⁰ Today the radical Buonarroti no longer seems to be so central to the manner in which Italian democracy is defined, and the ideas of many patriots, once dismissed as anti-revolutionary and moderate, can be better understood in the context of the debates within the democratic movement itself.¹¹ However, the notion of the Italian elites as fundamentally anti-revolutionary, oligarchic, and, in the words of Marco Meriggi, reluctant to endorse the ‘individualistic ideas of European liberalism’, has dominated Italian historiography until recently.¹² Further stimulus to our understanding of the Risorgimento as an intellectual process has been provided by those non-Italian scholars who have used a postcolonial theoretical framework to assess the impact of northern European culture on Italians’ perception of themselves. Nelson Moe has argued that the Grand Tourists’ description of Italy determined the ways in which Italians defined themselves in the long nineteenth century. Adopting a similar interpretative framework, Marta Petrusewicz has demonstrated that, while in exile in northern Europe or in northern Italy before 1848, Southern Italian patriots absorbed northern European bourgeois values and internalized notions of Southern backwardness and barbarity, understood as the negation of civilization and progress.¹³ My research engages with these historiographical developments, and is intended to enhance our understanding both of the processes leading to the formation of Italy’s national consciousness and of its essential nature. Indeed, I am convinced that in order to understand the Risorgimento, it is crucial to analyse the intellectual motivations of these patriots and their deepest aspirations; in other words, we have to understand their liberalism and their nationalism. As I shall demonstrate, the exiles’ brand of liberalism, once account is taken of ¹⁰ A classic example is G. Bollati, ‘L’italiano’, in R. Romano and C. Vivanti (eds), Storia d’Italia, vol. 1: I caratteri originali ( Turin, 1972), pp. 949–1022. On Bollati’s interpretation see now S. Patriarca, ‘National Identity or National Character? New Vocabularies and Old Paradigms’, in A. Russell Ascoli and K. Von Henneberg (eds), Making and Remaking Italy (Oxford and New York, 2001), pp. 299–319. ¹¹ A. De Francesco, ‘L’ombra di Buonarroti. Giacobinismo e Rivoluzione francese nella storiografia italiana del dopoguerra’, Storica, 5 (1999), 7–67. ¹² M. Meriggi, Gli stati italiani prima dell’unità: Una storia istituzionale (Bologna, 2002), pp. 172–4. For a revision of such views see now A. Chiavistelli, Dallo stato alla nazione. Costituzione e sfera pubblica in Toscana dal 1814 al 1849 (Rome, 2006). ¹³ M. Petrusewicz, Come il Meridione divenne una Questione: Rappresentazioni del Sud prima e dopo il Quarantotto (Soveria Mannelli, 1998); N. Moe, The View from Vesuvius: Italian Culture and the Southern Question (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 2002).

Introduction

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the transnational context in which it was elaborated, does not fit neatly into the traditional historiographical distinctions between democrats and moderates. Moreover, study of the exiles’ political thought does much to undermine the familiar claim that Risorgimento liberalism was decidedly exceptional. Secondly, while my research does engage with work influenced by postcolonial analysis, it is at the same time designed to modify some of the underlying assumptions of such historians, since it studies the ways in which Italian patriots were capable of questioning northern European stereotypes, and highlights the importance of intellectual exchanges between marginal communities. Third, whilst I recognize the merits of Banti’s approach, my understanding of the Risorgimento as an imagined community is not confined to its cultural dimension, or to the shared emotional, romanticized notion of the nation. Indeed, my intention is to accord due weight to ideology, politics, and the different forms of freedom in defining the nation, themes that are marginalized by the ‘new cultural history’.¹⁴ The idea of the nation developed by the Romantic generation embraced constitutional and institutional debates, historical narratives, economic policies, and notions of national character. In addition, I would argue that the Risorgimento, as a ‘late comer’ nationalism, represented first and foremost the attempt by Italian intellectuals to put Italy in touch with European civilization after centuries of decadence, in short, with what they construed as modernity. The whole Risorgimento discourse may be viewed as a complex dialogue between foreign economic and political models of the countries leading European civilization and the cultural heritage of Italy, whose particularity Italian patriots continued to value and defend. This explains why, in my opinion, the Risorgimento was conceived just as much in political as in cultural terms. Whilst it plainly did contain the many shared cultural elements so brilliantly analysed by Banti, its political dimension, for its part, gave rise to a wide variety of ideological models and a plurality of ideas of nationhood.¹⁵ The very nature of the Risorgimento as a dialogue with external models and cultures invites us to adopt a concept of nation which is ‘no longer national’, so that what is highlighted are, in Michel Espagne’s words, the processes of reciprocal generation of the different national identities.¹⁶ Exile played a crucial role in facilitating the transfer of ideas from other national discourses into the Risorgimento. As Franco Venturi and Alessandro Galante Garrone were perhaps the first to point out, the exiles had facilitated the reception and transmission of the principles of French and English liberalism and of foreign political and ¹⁴ A. Banti and P. Ginsborg (eds), ‘Il Risorgimento’, in Storia d’Italia, Annali 22 ( Turin, 2007). ¹⁵ On the importance of the shared elements of the Risorgimento national discourse see also S. Patriarca, ‘Indolence and Regeneration: Tropes and Tensions of Risorgimento Patriotism’, American Historical Review, 110 (2005), 380–408. ¹⁶ M. Espagne, ‘Sur les limites du comparatisme en histoire culturelle’, Genèses, 17 (1994), 112–21, at 121.

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institutional models into the Italian peninsula.¹⁷ Although access to foreign cultures was not limited to the exiles alone, since the Italian periodicals of the time bear evidence of the swift circulation of ideas between Italy and the rest of Europe, it is exclusively through the writings of the exiles that we can learn what Italian patriots thought about constitutional and institutional matters, and more generally about topics censored in the Italian press. What is remarkable about the generation of Italian patriots in question is the fact that they were the first in the Risorgimento to recognize the importance of external influences and their relevance to the redefinition of an Italian community (whereas the Italian democrats active between 1796 and 1799 were mainly preoccupied with the principles of the French Revolution). Despite the critical, even derogatory remarks levelled at them by the moderates and Mazzini alike, this generation of exiles played a crucial role in generating influential myths and in inaugurating important political traditions such as Anglophilia on the one hand and a deeply cosmopolitan understanding of Italian patriotism on the other. As a form of displacement, the experience of exile invites us to focus on how culture moves, on the relations that were established between Italy and the diasporic community, and between the diaspora and the cultures encountered in the host countries. In other words it prompts us to consider Risorgimento discourse in terms of ‘travel relations’.¹⁸ I will thus argue that the political emigration gave rise to forms of political and intellectual transnationalism, a term which points to ‘the multiple ties and interactions linking people or institutions across the borders of nation states’, and that it is in this light that we should consider exile and its impact upon Italian identity. In particular, two aspects of the transnational experience are worthy of investigation in relation to the experience of Risorgimento exile, namely, its tendency to shape consciousness (with what country do the exiles identify, and what allegiances do they develop), and its propensity to mould the modes of cultural reproduction (what impact do the exiles have as cultural mediators, and to what extent do they refuse or accept external cultural influences).¹⁹ By studying emigration in the early part of the Risorgimento, I do not wish to reconstruct the history of the Italian revolutionary movement abroad in terms of the formation of secret societies and their politics, an enterprise already largely and successfully achieved.²⁰ Rather, I intend to reconstitute, insofar as it is possible, some of the dialogues that took place not only among Italian nationals but also between them and other ¹⁷ Venturi, ‘La circolazione delle idee’; Galante Garrone, ‘L’emigrazione politica italiana’; see also S. Mastellone, Storia ideologica d’Europa da Sieyès a Marx (Florence, 1974), 192–3. ¹⁸ As conceptualized by J. Clifford, in his ‘Travelling Cultures’, in L. Grossberg, C. Nelson, and P. A. Treichler (eds), Cultural Studies (New York and London, 1992), 96–112, at 101. ¹⁹ According to the model proposed by S. Vertovec, ‘Conceiving and Researching Transnationalism’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 22 (1999), special issue, ‘Transnational Communities’, 447–62. See also C. A. Bayly, S. Beckert, M. Connelly, I. Hofmeyr, W. Kozol, and P. Seed, ‘AHR Conversation: on Transnational History’, American Historical Review, 111 (2006), 1440–64. ²⁰ Galante Garrone, Filippo Buonarroti e i Rivoluzionari italiani.

Introduction

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revolutionaries and intellectuals across Europe and the Americas. I hope first to cast some light on the impact of such dialogues on the national identity and culture of both the Italian exiles and their interlocutors, and on their legacy to the Risorgimento in general. By so doing, I will also attempt to gain a better understanding of the manner in which ideas circulated between the Italian diaspora, other marginal intellectual communities, and metropolitan centres. It is on the cultural transfers that the experience of exile facilitated that I wish to focus my attention.²¹ Finally, a few words on definitions and scope. For the purposes of this investigation, it is helpful to notice that the experience of ‘exile’, a term I intend to use to describe the condition of the Italian patriots living outside Italy, and a word employed by the Italians living abroad to define themselves, undoubtedly overlaps, and often coincides, with other conditions. Indeed, Risorgimento emigration was both political and economic in nature, to the extent that it is often difficult to disentangle the complex motives behind the decision to leave. Whether in Spain fighting for the constitutional forces, or in Britain teaching Italian literature and writing for the press, or in Spanish America exploiting new commercial opportunities, the exiles were driven by ideological and economic objectives at one and the same time. Although their activities as exiles were determined by economic preoccupations, they nonetheless often enlisted as volunteers in revolutionized countries, a choice with clear and distinctive political implications.²² The ambiguous relationship between the categories of political exile, economic migrant, and volunteer is well illustrated by the case of the exiled military men. Since many of the exiles had already served in the Italian peninsula as military officers and soldiers, by joining the Constitutional army in Spain or the Greek regular army as volunteers during the revolution they also secured a regular salary. Financial concerns may well have been uppermost in their mind. While the fact that they wished to continue fighting for the Constitutional armies may point to their liberal political allegiances, it is as well to remember that some of them were not squeamish about changing sides in order to make a living.²³ Furthermore, exile often turned into adventure and into an experience of travelling, as is evident in the biographies of writers like Costantino Beltrami ²¹ I endorse the definition of cultural transfer advanced by Laurier Turgeon, who talks about cultural transfers resulting from ‘dynamics of appropriation and adaptation’, and states that ‘Cultural transfer arises from a balance of power between two or more groups that conduct exchanges in order to assert themselves and to acquire something belonging to the other(s)’, ‘From Acculturation to Cultural Transfer’, in idem, D. Delâge, and R. Ouellet (eds), Transferts culturels et métissages Amérique/Europe XVI–XX Siècle (Paris, 1996), 33–54, at 37. ²² For a discussion on the category of political volunteers see G. Pécout, ‘Philhellenism in Italy: Political Friendship and the Italian Volunteers in the Mediterranean in the Nineteenth-Century’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 9 (2004), 405–27. ²³ Ludovico Cassini to Giacomo Cassini, Barcelona, June 5 1822 (AST, Materie Politiche per rapporto coll’estero, Carte politiche Diverse, 10, Corrispondenze intercettate, n. 2549).

8


and Filippo Pananti, who took advantage of their exile to discover the Americas and the Mediterranean. It is not my intention to provide a social history of the early Risorgimento emigration, a task that is still to be addressed. I will simply note that the post-Napoleonic Italian diaspora included a high proportion of former soldiers and army officers, while many were university students, lawyers, men of letters, notaries and medical doctors. Although the exact number of exiles is not known, for the period following 1815 it seems safe to argue that certainly more than 500 people, and probably over a thousand left Italy.²⁴ From a generational point of view, the exile community included both those born before the Napoleonic invasion of Italy, and those (mainly students) who were too young to have been directly affected by the Napoleonic experience.²⁵ My investigation will be confined to the study of the writings and political activities of thirty-five exiles between 1815 and the late 1830s. Yet, even so limited a sample includes the leaders of the revolutions in Naples, Milan, and Turin, and some very famous poets and men of letters such as Ugo Foscolo and Francesco Salfi, most of whom came from privileged social backgrounds. However, whenever possible, I have dealt also with the texts of far more obscure and less privileged figures like GianBattista Marochetti or Vitale Albera, convinced as I am that these minor writings may also shed light upon the dissemination of certain ideas in the exile community. Each section of the book is devoted to the impact of specific revolutionary events or countries on the exiles’ political debates. I will begin by retracing the exiles’ peregrinations around liberal Spain, then shift to the newly independent Spanish American states, return to Europe in the guise of revolutionary Greece and the Mediterranean, and finish my tour in England. While in most cases my analysis of these countries includes an assessment of the exiles’ direct involvement in their national politics, some of the debates regarding such places, given the transnational nature of the exiles’ discussions, took place elsewhere. Indeed, although no specific section will be devoted to Paris or Brussels, I hope to show that these transnational political and intellectual centres played a crucial role in determining the nature and content of the exiles’ debates, for instance, on Greece and Latin America. At the same time, the exiles’ view of England cannot be understood without taking into account Paris as an intellectual centre. Yet before embarking on this tour of the places of exile, I wish to consider the intellectual education of the Italian patriots before exile, and their first engagement with the notion of Italy as a nation. ²⁴ Numerical data on the exiles can now be found in A. Bistarelli, ‘Vivere il mito spagnolo. Gli esiliati italiani in Catalogna durante il trienio liberal’, Trienio, 32 (1998), 5–14, and 33 (1999), 65–90; S. Carbone, I rifugiati italiani in Francia (1815–1830) (Rome, 1962); C. Beolchi wrote that at least one thousand exiles left Piedmont after 1821 (Beolchi, Reminiscenze dell’esilio [Turin, 1852], p. 225). ²⁵ A. Bistarelli, ‘Lo specchio spagnolo. Il doppio sguardo del liberalismo italiano di inizio ottocento’, Rassegna Storica del Risorgimento, 91 (2004), 181–201.

Introduction

9

W H O W E R E T H E E X I L E S ? F RO M N A P O L E O N I S TS TO R EVO LU T I O N A R I E S Those patriots who fled Italy at the beginning of the Restoration, and all the leaders of the 1820–1 revolutions who left the peninsula, were born between the late 1770s and 1780s and the end of the century. The most prominent intellectuals of the diaspora and the former leaders of the 1821 revolutions tended to be among the oldest of the exiles. This fact had two important implications for the intellectual origins of their patriotism and the way in which they conceived the Risorgimento. First, their education and culture was inevitably affected by the heritage of the Italian Enlightenment. The ideas of Antonio Genovesi, Gaetano Filangieri, and Pietro Verri supplied a framework for their social, economic, and political debates. Secondly, the revolutionary triennium of Italian Jacobin Republics, inaugurated with Napoleon’s invasion of Italy in May 1796, moulded their political views and, by and large, their patriotism. Most of those in exile after 1815, such as Ugo Foscolo, Santorre di Santarosa, GianBattista Marochetti, Claudio Linati, Orazio Santangelo de Attellis, Alfio Grassi, Guglielmo Pepe, and Alerino Palma, enthusiastically endorsed the political language of the French Revolution, employed it to describe the Italian nation as an independent political entity which coincided with the people, and continued to refer back to these years of their youth later in life as a crucial political and patriotic apprenticeship.²⁶ The republican notion of regeneration through the enjoyment of freedom and representative institutions underpinned this democratic patriotism, based on the belief that civic virtues fostered by education and participation for the common good were vital to the survival of the republic. The very idea of the Risorgimento from then on would remain inextricably linked with such ideas.²⁷ Indeed, even within the democratic movement, a variety of positions and notions of patria can be detected. The political language of the most radical of them, the so-called Italian Jacobins, owed much to the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. They wanted to promote a society of virtuous landowners and sought to establish direct democracy. Ancient republics became the model to be examined in their discussions. They spoke the language of republican virtues and defended the role of active participation in political life. They went so far as to advocate universal suffrage or the establishment of a direct democracy. Their idea of democracy and equality implied that a redistribution of wealth ²⁶ As demonstrated by their memoirs, or writings published in exile, discussed in the following chapters. See, for instance, G. Pepe, Memoirs, 3 vols (London, 1846), i, pp. 24–5. ²⁷ C. Capra, ‘Questione nazionale e identità italiana nel periodo rivoluzionario (1789–1802)’, in D. Balani, D. Carpanetto, and M. Roggero (eds), Dall’origine dei lumi alla rivoluzione: Scritti in onore di Luciano Guerci e Giuseppe Ricuperati (Rome, 2008), pp. 125–44.

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was necessary to create a truly democratic regime. Another group of patriots, in fact the majority, while defending the Italian Jacobin Republics, confined their demands for equality to equality in the face of the law, linked political rights to landownership, condemned any attempt that threatened private property, and drew on the Italian reforming tradition rather than on Rousseau’s ideas in their social, political, and economic discussions.²⁸ A number of political events and external factors, however, drastically changed the context in which this democratic patriotism was conceived between 1796 and 1799, and led to a profound rethinking of both the political and the intellectual dimensions of the Italian patriots’ notion of nationhood. As of 1800, when Napoleon re-established his position of power within the peninsula after a temporary set-back, it became increasingly clear that the key element of the democrats’ political programme, a substantial degree of independence from France, could not be accomplished, given Napoleon’s wish to keep a firm hold over Italy. Although, until the declaration of the Repubblica Italiana in 1802, many of the democrats still hoped that some degree of autonomy could be guaranteed, they had already started to reflect upon the reasons for the internal weaknesses of the Republics, and to learn a few lessons from that political experience. The fragility of the Neapolitan revolution, which had been met with the hostility of the masses in 1799, and in general the phenomenon of the popular uprisings (the Insorgenze), demonstrated to many patriots that a republican order had to take into account the habits and customs of the local population, and that the constitutions with their ‘abstract’ principles imported from France could not work in a markedly different social system. In short, in order to win the masses over to the republican order, what was needed was a national path to freedom, based on local traditions. Although the most famous formulation of such a principle was supplied by Vincenzo Cuoco’s Saggio Storico sulla Rivoluzione Napoletana del 1799 (1801), where he claimed that the republic in Naples had been passive because it was based on foreign ideas at odds with the expectations and beliefs of the people, such reflections were widely shared among democrats.²⁹ Indeed in a similar vein the democrat Ugo Foscolo, in his Orazione a Bonaparte, made it clear that constitutions ought to be founded ²⁸ S. Nutini, ‘L’esperienza giacobina nella Repubblica Cisalpina’, in M. L. Salvadori and N. Tranfaglia (eds), Il modello politico giacobino e le rivoluzioni (Florence, 1990), pp. 100–31; E. Pii, ‘La ricerca di un modello politico durante il triennio rivoluzionario (1796–99) in Italia’, in V. I. Comparato (ed.), Modelli nella storia del pensiero politico, 2 vols (Florence, 1989), ii, pp. 271–96; D. Donnini Macciò and R. Romani, ‘All Equally Rich: Economic Knowledge in Revolutionary Italy, 1796–1799’, Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, 14 (1996), 23–49. U. Carpi, ‘Appunti su ideologia post-rivoluzionaria e riflessione storiografica dopo il triennio giacobino’, Rivista Italiana di Studi Napoleonici, 29 (1992), 41–128. ²⁹ A. De Francesco, ‘Costruire la nazione: il dibattito politico negli anni della repubblica’, in A. Robbiati Bianchi (ed.), La formazione del primo stato italiano e Milano capitale 1802–1814 (Milan, 2006), pp. 611–27.

Introduction

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on ‘nature, the arts, the strengths and the habits of the people’.³⁰ As we shall see, the belief that national culture and tradition had to be taken into account when building a polity, and that foreign political models could not be imported without adjustments, would later inform the exiles’ attitude towards the foreign constitutions and institutions they came to admire abroad. Second, the abolition after 1800 of all forms of representation, and the crushing of all hopes of enjoying any degree of political independence had another important consequence for patriotic discourse: Italy’s cultural traditions were rehabilitated and accorded a central place in the definition of Italian nationhood. In the absence of freedom, the patria came increasingly to be identified with the glorious cultural inheritance of Italy, and with its unique contribution to Europe’s civilization. It is thus in this context that the notion of the primato, or primacy of Italy’s letters and sciences, became central to Italy’s national identity. With it patriots now took pride in reassessing the role Italians had played in founding a number of important branches of modern culture, from literature to the arts, and from historiography to economics. In 1802, for instance, Francesco Saverio Salfi published his Elogio di Antonio Serra (Milan), stressing the latter’s pivotal role in establishing political economy as an independent science as early as the beginning of the seventeenth century. This cultural ‘rediscovery’ of the nation was supported by the Napoleonic government itself, and in particular by the Vice-President of the Republic, Melzi, who was keen to rally all Italian intellectuals around a programme aimed at reinforcing the legitimacy of the regime. However, such a form of cultural patriotism, at any rate as interpreted by most patriots, also contained a pointedly strong anti-French element, and an implicit hostility towards foreign occupation.³¹ In Piedmont, under French occupation and from 1809 an integral part of France, such notions of nationhood were embraced by the aristocrats of the Accademia dei Concordi who, under the influence of Vittorio Alfieri, rejected French culture and language in favour of the Italian language and of a rediscovery of Italy’s literary tradition. Among them we find the young Santorre di Santarosa, who was to become one of the leaders of the Piedmontese revolution and one of the most famous exiles of the Risorgimento.³² The idea of nationhood developed under Napoleon was thus inextricably linked to what Gilles Pécout calls ‘the nationalism of hatred’, as exemplified by the writings of Alfieri and Foscolo, for example by the Misogallo and by the Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis.³³ In spite of their disillusionment with Napoleon, after 1802 many of the former democrats continued to work either as civil servants or in the army within the ³⁰ U. Foscolo, Orazione a Bonaparte pel Congresso di Lione, ed. L. Rossi (Rome, 2002), p. 83. On the orazione see U. Carpi, ‘Il Programma nazionale di un intellettuale post-giacobino’, in Foscolo, Orazione, pp. 9–42. ³¹ De Francesco, Costruire la nazione. ³² E. Passerin D’Entrèves, La giovinezza di Cesare Balbo (Florence, 1940), pp. 8–16. ³³ G. Pécout, Naissance de l’Italie contemporaine 1770–1922 (Paris, 1993), p. 64.

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Repubblica Italiana, and after 1805 in the Kingdoms of Italy and Naples or in the Departments directly annexed to the Empire. A variety of reasons account for such a decision. First, they took the army and the administration to be repositories of the legacy of the revolution, since to some degree at least its principles were recognized in the Napoleonic Civil Code’s promotion of equality before the law, and arenas where personal merit was recognized regardless of social background and where those with talent tended to win promotion. It is precisely in the army and in the administration that the patriots tried, in so far as was possible, to conceive and promote some forms of political debate and independence of action. Indeed, often, if not always, such career choices had pronounced political implications. In addition, given the unfavourable international context, and the general hostility to French rule displayed by the masses, for many patriots the current government was the best possible option available to the Italians, at least for the time being. The regime could still offer social and political stability, and national institutions around which a sense of belonging to a single national community could finally be built. These views were reflected in the new patriotic discourse developed after 1802. Napoleonic patriotism put the emphasis on building the nation from above or, as patriots in the period kept repeating, on creating a ‘public mind’, an attachment to the state and its institutions through education and military service. Thus nation-building from above replaced the idea of a nation created from below, through the stimulus of political freedom and republican virtues.³⁴ While many former democrats worked for and supported the existence of the Napoleonic regime as a ‘lesser evil’, they also conveyed their political frustrations at the lack of independence and expressed their continuing attachment to the ideas of democracy through secret societies such as the Freemasonry and the Carboneria.³⁵ Patriots like Ugo Foscolo, for instance, continued to work for the Napoleonic states as army officers and, in Foscolo’s own case, for a brief period as a professor at the University of Pavia, but never abandoned their democratic ideals. On the contrary, they retained a measure of hostility towards Napoleon—which, where Foscolo was concerned, occasionally led to brushes with the authorities—and were almost certainly involved in secret societies.³⁶ Francesco Saverio Salfi, who taught as Professor of Philosophy and History at the Brera, and from 1807 as Professor of History and Diplomacy at the Scuola Superiore of Milan, likewise joined secret societies. Thus the relationship between Italian patriotism and the Napoleonic experience can at best be defined as complex, ranging from outright rejection of the regime on the one hand to unabashed support on the other. For those ³⁴ M. Isabella, ‘Italy 1760–1815’, in H. Barker and S. Burrows (eds), Press, Politics and the Public Sphere in Europe and North America 1760–1820 (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 201–23, at p. 217. ³⁵ Carpi, ‘Appunti su ideologia postrivoluzionaria’. ³⁶ C. Del Vento, Un allievo della rivoluzione: Ugo Foscolo dal ‘‘noviziato letterario’’ al ‘‘nuovo classicismo’’ (1795–1806) (Bologna, 2003).

Introduction

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who were too young to have been involved in the political and intellectual life of the Democratic Period, or revolutionary triennium, the Risorgimento and its political programme were identified with the Republic of Italy and the Kingdom. For the ‘Napoleonists’, the revolutionary triennium had represented a brief interlude of political and social upheaval, whereas, they claimed, after 1802 stability had been achieved, along with the survival of the most important legacies of the revolution. A typical representative of this category was Giuseppe Pecchio, who became Assistant to the Council of State for domestic and financial affairs in 1808, at the age of twenty-three. In his Saggio Storico sulla amministrazione finanziera dell’ex Regno d’Italia, written in 1817 and published in 1820, when assessing the impact of the Napoleonic administration on society, he was keen to stress how the constitutional nature of the Italian government, based on respect for civil liberties, the abolition of all aristocratic privileges, and the availability of a national educational system, encouraged the formation of a public mind, quintessentially middle class in nature, and fostered the development of a true ‘national character’.³⁷ While acknowledging the exploitative nature of Napoleon’s financial policies in Italy, Pecchio also praised the positive impact that state intervention, the reinvestment of taxation, protectionism, and the presence of a capital city and administration had on the economy. However, even the keenest supporters of Napoleon, Pecchio among them, still regarded him as a foreign and authoritarian ruler, whereas conversely, those who were uncompromisingly hostile would later recognize the undeniable merits of his administrative and legal reforms, and their importance in shaping a national character. Furthermore, as historians of the period have shown, political attitudes towards Napoleon tended to divide along lines of class. Aristocrats were arguably more prone to hostility towards the emperor than were middle-class intellectuals; although some of them begrudgingly agreed to work for the regime, and saw in the creation of the notabilato (a social elite based on private property, not rank) a sufficient guarantee of their social supremacy as landowners, others proudly refused to have anything to do with it.³⁸ Yet while such broad distinctions may well be true, there is no denying the fact that many of those in exile after 1821 were aristocrats who had been enthusiastic democrats between 1796 and 1799, and who had then willingly served the emperor either in the army or in the administration, evincing a genuine enthusiasm for the administrative reforms he introduced. Santarosa served as sub-prefect of La Spezia between 1812 and 1814; from 1809 Ferdinando Dal Pozzo di Castellino e San Vincenzo was president of the Court of Appeal of Genoa; Count Alerino Palma di Cesnola, member of the provisional government in 1798, became Prefect of Ivrea in 1802. Dal Pozzo, ³⁷ G. Pecchio, Saggio Storico sulla amministrazione finanziera dell’ex regno d’Italia dal 1802 al 1814 [1820] (London, 1826), pp. 143–8. ³⁸ M. Broers, Napoleonic Imperialism and the Savoyard Monarchy 1773–1821: State Building in Piedmont (New York, 1997), pp. 405, 449–50.

14


disappointed with the backward nature of the restored monarchy in Piedmont, where the pre-Napoleonic legislation had been immediately reintroduced by Victor Emanuel, published a detailed analysis in which he did not stint his praises of the Napoleonic administrative reforms. The most important legacy of that period, so far as the patriots’ understanding of the Risorgimento of Italy was concerned, was the identification of the nation with the state, with its efficient administration, and with its cultural identity. These three notions would accompany them also in their exile. The last years of Napoleon’s rule in Italy and the early years of the Restoration saw an increase in the activities of secret societies, within which different political attitudes coexisted. The fall of the Napoleonic governments and the temporary political fluidity of the situation in Italy seemed fleetingly to offer the Italian states new opportunities for obtaining a genuine independence and freedom, and the patriots tried to take advantage of this to advance their often diverging political objectives.³⁹ As a consequence, either because of their involvement in illegal political activities, or because they had been too compromised by the previous regime, or simply because they preferred to leave rather than to live under the new governments, a first wave of exiles fled the peninsula just after the fall of Napoleon. Giacomo Costantino Beltrami, for instance, was forced to leave the Papal States in 1817, where the authorities were aware of his support for the previous regime and of his involvement in plots against the restored papal authority. It is precisely at the fall of the Kingdom of Italy that Ugo Foscolo along with a group of other Italian army officers plotted in support of Eugène de Beauharnais’s ambitions to become King of Italy.⁴⁰ When the Austrians returned, Foscolo, after a tentative rapprochement with them, could not bring himself to swear an oath of allegiance and fled to Switzerland. Others, like Francesco Salfi, supported Murat’s ambitions to build an Italian independent state, and likewise fled the peninsula in 1814. Yet for those who bided their time, and left only after the 1821 revolutions had failed, the early years of the Restoration were crucial in further developing their political culture and adding new elements to their understanding of the nation. The Restoration failed to meet the expectations of the Italian patriots. With the exception of Piedmont in the early years of the Restoration, the Papal States and Modena, the Italian states retained at least a few of the Napoleonic reforms while reintroducing some aristocratic privileges. The former democrats and the most enthusiastic Napoleonists were disappointed in their hopes that Italy might be reshaped in the light of their national aspirations. Furthermore, they saw many, if not all, of the Napoleonic reforms dismantled after 1815, and their hopes for ³⁹ J. Davis, Naples and Napoleon: Southern Italy and the European Revolutions 1780–1860 (Oxford, 2006), pp. 265–7. ⁴⁰ C. Del Vento, ‘Foscolo e ‘‘Gli antichi amici dell’indipendenza’’ ’, Rivista di Letteratura Italiana, 13 (1995), 79–136.

Introduction

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the introduction of constitutional charters frustrated. Likewise, many aristocrats demanded constitutional charters, modelled upon the French Charter of 1814 or the Sicilian Constitution, to guarantee a privileged political role denied to them by the restored regimes. These years witnessed the introduction of the notion of ‘liberal’ and ‘liberalism’ into the political language of Italian patriots, expressions which described their anti-Austrian, anti-Restoration, and pro-constitutional agendas. Historians have noted how vague such labels were, since they served as a banner for a wide range of political groupings. While the aristocratic programme was ostensibly little more than a thinly veiled attempt at turning the clock back to pre-revolutionary times, when the nobility controlled local power without much interference from the centre, and was unreservedly hostile to the concept of the nation, the essentially middle-class and pro-Napoleonic programme was democratic and national in nature, in continuity with the repressed aspirations developed in the years of French rule.⁴¹ The coining of the term ‘false liberal’ both by Lombard and Piedmontese aristocrats to label former Napoleonic supporters, and the adoption of precisely the same dismissive label by the former Napoleonists suspicious of the aristocratic political agenda, testifies to the rift between the two visions.⁴² This analysis may well be true if we look at social classes in broad terms after 1815. At the same time, however, several caveats are required. First, such interpretations fail to take into account the fact that the aristocratic liberalism and patriotism developed in the aftermath of the Napoleonic era was not simply an updated version of the pre-revolutionary aristocratic preoccupations with the control of local government. Indeed, it was fully conversant with ideological developments taking place on the other side of the Alps, an aspect of the liberalism of that generation further developed by the aristocrats who went into exile after 1821. The intellectuals in the Coppet circle, Sismondi, Constant and Mme de Staël among them, provided the Italian patriots with the intellectual tools to make a critical assessment of Napoleon and to accommodate their political ambitions without denying each and every theoretical achievement of the revolution. In particular, de Staël’s Considérations sur la Révolution Française had a key role to play in the shaping of post-Napoleonic moderate liberalism.⁴³ Secondly, at least some of the liberal aristocrats recognized the beneficial effects ⁴¹ M. Meriggi, ‘Liberalismo o libertà dei ceti? Costituzionalismo lombardo agli albori della restaurazione’, Studi Storici, 22 (1981), 315–43; idem, ‘State and Society in Post-Napoleonic Italy’, in D. Laven and L. Riall (eds), Napoleon’s Legacy: Problems of Government in Restoration Europe (Oxford, 2000), pp. 49–63. ⁴² M. Meriggi, ‘La società lombarda tra il 1815 e il 1821’, in G. Barbarisi and A. Cadioli (eds), Idee e figure del ‘Conciliatore’ (Milan, 2004), pp. 1–12; C. Capra, ‘Tra gli amici di Stendhal; notabili e funzionari della Milano napoleonica’, in Stendhal e Milano: Atti del 14 ◦ Congresso Internazionale Stendhaliano, 2 vols (Florence, 1982), i, pp. 415–22. ⁴³ I. Angrisani Guerrini, ‘Madame de Staël, gli Italiani e le Considérations sur la Révolution Française’, in Mélanges a` la mémoire de Franco Simone: France et Italie dans la culture européenne xix et xx siècles, 4 vols (Geneva, 1980–4), iii, pp. 51–84; A. Galante Garrone, ‘Aspetti politici del

16


of the French administrative reforms, and regretted their abolition. Finally, some affinity between the two positions may be discerned if we take into consideration the fact that both moderate liberals and democrats included elements of administrative decentralization in their political programmes. As became clear during the 1821 revolutions, even the democrats themselves advocated a revision of the centralized version of the state introduced under Napoleon, so as to avoid the fiscal and administrative problems which had arisen during that period.⁴⁴ Scrutiny of the liberalism elaborated in the pages of the Conciliatore, a Romantic journal published in Milan between 1818 and 1819, suggests that even aristocratic liberals acknowledged the important institutional and political legacy of the Napoleonic era.⁴⁵ More importantly, the articles in the Conciliatore bear witness to the aspiration of the intellectual elites of Piedmont and Lombardy to acquaint themselves with the political and literary culture of the rest of Europe, as well as with the economic and social progress of its most developed societies, namely the French and the English. For the Conciliatore, it was now imperative for Italian culture to be in touch again with developments from the rest of Europe. Anchoring their arguments to the antinomies of decadence and progress, the journalists of the Conciliatore argued that although, since the end of the previous century, Italy had indeed been undergoing a process of moral and civil regeneration, only by opening up to the political, economic, and cultural influences of northern Europe did it stand any chance of avoiding a relapse into its former state of backwardness and decadence.⁴⁶ Such arguments had been aired often enough by Italian intellectuals in the late eighteenth century, but there was now a new emphasis upon popular education, and upon technological and industrial development as the hallmarks of European progress. For the Conciliatore Romanticism and the critique of a wholly sterile defence of Italy’s literary tradition were inextricably linked with such notions of modern civilization.⁴⁷ As a consequence, the Piedmontese and Lombard Romantic intellectuals, under the influence of French liberalism, developed a highly cosmopolitan notion of patriotism. In Giovanni Berchet’s own words, which echoed those of Benjamin Constant, ‘the contemporary peoples of Europe Romanticismo Italiano’, in idem, L’albero della libertà: Dai Giacobini a Garibaldi (Florence, 1987), pp. 98–122. ⁴⁴ Davis, Naples and Napoleon, pp. 298, 310. ⁴⁵ Di Breme, ‘Considerazioni sopra i principali avvenimenti della rivoluzione francese. Opera postuma della signora baronessa di Staël; pubblicata dal sig. Duca di Broglie, e dal sig. barone de Staël. . .’, Il Conciliatore, 24 September 1818, i, 113–20. ⁴⁶ M. Guglielminetti, ‘ ‘‘Decadenza’’ e ‘‘progresso’’ dell’Italia nel dibattito fra classicisti e romantici’, in La Restaurazione in Italia: strutture e ideologie. Atti del XLVII congresso di Storia del Risorgimento italiano (Rome, 1976), pp.251–96. ⁴⁷ On the Conciliatore, see Barbarisi and Cadioli (eds), Idee e figure del ‘Conciliatore’ ; on the late eighteenth-century debates about the decadence of Italy see Capra, ‘Questione nazionale e identità italiana’.

Introduction

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form one single family of brothers; teach that being one against the other is not the work of the general interest, but rather of the individual passions’.⁴⁸ Admittedly, after 1815, and likewise after 1821, the ‘patriotism of hatred’ remained an integral part of the Piedmontese and Lombard Romantic national discourse. Santarosa’s musings about an Italian national consciousness in his unpublished Delle Speranze degli Italiani, begun in 1816, thus owed much to antiFrench and anti-Austrian feelings.⁴⁹ However, a crucial shift in the formulation of nationhood after 1815 saw a marked emphasis upon the cosmopolitan understanding of culture, and upon the need to construct a national identity based on the exchange of ideas. Such notions were further developed during exile, and indeed attained a novel degree of conceptual sophistication. Between 1820 and 1821 the revolutionary option thus seemed to the liberals the only means to prevent Italy from lagging behind the most advanced parts of Europe. Indeed, both democratic and moderate liberals judged that only through confrontation with the monarchs could their goals be realized. In Turin and in Naples the rulers conceded constitutions begrudgingly and under duress, and turned their backs on the liberals as soon as they feasibly could. While the revolutionary movement reflected the development of both brands of liberalism discussed above, its Napoleonic-democratic strand, which took its bearings from the Spanish example, represented the most robust and most influential of the two. A single chamber elected by universal, if indirect, suffrage, the protection of civil rights, and no special constitutional privileges for the aristocracy were the hallmarks of this constitution. If we except Milan, where the anti-Austrian plot was fundamentally an aristocratic enterprise in which only one among the leaders, Pecchio, had a political agenda inspired by the Napoleonic period, the revolutions in Piedmont and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies contained many elements of continuity with the Napoleonic era, and saw the position of the most advanced liberals prevailing over those who favoured a constitution granting a special role to the aristocracy.⁵⁰ This political continuity is borne out by the prominence of former Napoleonic personnel in revolutionary events, and by the role that the secret societies, from the society of the Federati in Piedmont and Lombardy to the Carbonarist Lodges in the South, had in politicizing the elites of the Italian territories and in preparing the ground for revolution. More than a third of the military officers involved in the revolution in Piedmont had served under Napoleon, and many of the leaders in Turin and in the provinces had likewise been officers under the French regime. Among the former Napoleonic officers ⁴⁸ G. Berchet, ‘Storia della poesia di F. Bouterwek’, Conciliatore, 1 October 1818, i, pp. 150–1, 147. ⁴⁹ S. di Santarosa, Delle Speranze degli italiani, ed. A. Colombo (Milan, 1920), pp. 107, 110, and passim. ⁵⁰ G. Candeloro, ‘Dalla Restaurazione alla Rivoluzione nazionale’, in idem, Storia dell’Italia moderna (Milan, 1958), vol. 2, pp. 75–120.

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who would become prominent figures in exile we might mention, along with Santarosa, Carlo Bianco di Saint-Jorioz, leader of the uprising in Alessandria, and Giacinto Provana di Collegno in Novara. The importance of the Napoleonic period is further demonstrated by the average age of the army officers involved in the revolution, namely thirty-three, an age which reflects the fact that most of them had first joined the army and fought during the previous regime. But the revolution was not exclusively a military event, since many former civil servants such as Palma di Cesnola, who headed the insurrection in Ivrea, and Marochetti in Biella, were also involved. More than half of those investigated by the police after the revolution were in fact of bourgeois background and had nothing whatsoever to do with the army.⁵¹ In Naples, the Muratian element of the army may have been crucial in initiating and leading the revolution, which included military leaders such as the Pepe brothers, Michele Carascosa, and Giuseppe Poerio, but the revolutionary movement also won some support from the provincial middle class.⁵² The revolutionary leadership had somewhat unrealistic expectations of success, given the general hostility of the international system and the monarchs to their requests. Moreover, it was riven with personal conflicts and disagreements over political and military strategies, which reverberated in the memoirs and pamphlets written in exile. In the years to come the exiled patriots would have plenty of time to reflect upon revolutionary events and upon the reasons for their failure, and to learn lessons from them, but the experience of the Napoleonic period and of the revolutions left an enduring legacy which would inform their political battles and the programmes they developed outside Italy. ⁵¹ G. Marsengo and G. Parlato, Dizionario dei Piemontesi Compromessi nei moti del 1821, 2 vols ( Turin, 1982–6), i, pp. 95 and ff. ⁵² Davis, Naples and Napoleon, pp. 295–316.

PART I A LI B E R A L I N T E R N AT I O N A L ? T H E I TA L I A N E X I L E S A N D T H E WO R L DW I D E S T RU G G L E F O R F R E E D O M


1 A Liberal International: Simultaneous Revolutions and the Birth of a Transnational Civil Society The revolutions in Piedmont, Naples, and Sicily were part of a broader international movement that swept through Europe from Portugal and Spain to its south-eastern border, in Greece, and also touched Russia in 1825. Rafael Riego’s pronunciamento in Cadiz on 1 January 1820 inaugurated the Spanish revolution and then furnished the rest of Europe with a political and ideological model, linking an insurrection organized by secret societies under military leadership with a democratic agenda to be achieved within the framework of a constitutional monarchy.¹ The role of the army, and in particular of the officers, the network of secret societies behind their organization and the call for a constitution represented common elements in all these uprisings. Even in France, where a revolution as such did not take place and where the Charte octroyeé represented a compromise between the political forces of change and those of reaction, the plots of the Charbonnerie in the early 1820s demonstrate the readiness of a part of the army and of sectors of society to support an insurrection.² Indeed, these events represented the culmination of an age of converging revolutions, inaugurated with the independence of America in 1776 and the French Revolution. Ideologically the uprisings of the 1820s are evidence for the globalization of the revolutionary ideologies that upheld the notion of popular sovereignty, constitutional rights, and representation as the precondition for any legitimate polity. What made them noteworthy was not necessarily the social basis of their leadership, but the fact that even the most socially conservative of these revolutionaries were willing to defend the notion that only ‘the people’ could legitimate a government.³ Although all these revolutions, ¹ I. Castells, La utopía insurrecional del liberalismo (Barcelona, 1989), p. 21. See also eadem, ‘Le libéralisme insurrectionnel espagnol (1814–1830)’, Annales historiques de la Révolution Française, 76 (2004), 221–33. ² A. B. Spitzer, Old Hatreds and Young Hopes: The French Carbonari against the Bourbon Restoration (Cambridge, MA, 1971). ³ C. A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World 1780–1914 (London, 2004), pp. 106–7.

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with the exception of the Greek movement for independence, failed, they did not merely represent the tail-end of the Napoleonic era. In fact, they advanced an agenda which was pitted against the new global order fashioned between 1814 and 1815, and thus it too required new conceptual tools and political solutions, which were labelled ‘liberal’.⁴ Since these revolutions challenged a European political order in which a minority of parliamentary governments coexisted with empires or absolute monarchies based on the notion of legitimacy, this period can be best described as one of ‘unstable pluralism’.⁵ After 1815 the great powers employed military interventions and international cooperation to deal with the revolutionary challenges to the restored regimes.⁶ It is no coincidence that the ideological opposition to Metternich’s system regarded the overturning of the Vienna settlement as the very essence of the notion of liberalism. The European revolutions not only presented converging features and simultaneous episodes arising out of parallel social and ideological origins, but were also in themselves events intimately connected one with the other. The revolutionaries developed contacts across state boundaries, and different secret societies were in constant communication with each other. The leaders of the Neapolitan revolution thus desperately tried to obtain the support of their Spanish counterparts, either through diplomatic channels or by contacting Spanish politicians directly.⁷ The ability of such organizations to act as a uniform and perfectly coordinated structure was indeed exaggerated by contemporaries who were obsessed, like Metternich, with the threat of a global conspiracy against the status quo. For the transnational network of secret societies did not have a common centre supervising the events unfolding in each corner of the continent. As Alan Spitzer correctly reminds us, ‘This was a movement [. . .] with a circumference everywhere and a centre nowhere, or rather with a centre in the mind of every conspirator who believed that he pulled the strings that moved his foreign comrades.’⁸ But such contacts did exist and did matter. Indeed, the Italian exiles played their own part in furthering the international reach of the secret societies. Between 1821 and 1823 Guglielmo Pepe and Giuseppe Pecchio and others like them exported the Carboneria to Spain, extending their conspiratorial networks to Spanish and Portuguese liberals. In England the new e´migré community tried to establish links between the secret societies and members of the local political community.⁹ ⁴ F. Venturi, ‘Le rivoluzioni liberali’, in Le Rivoluzioni borghesi, 5 vols, ed. R. Romano, vol. 4: Storia delle Rivoluzioni (Milan, 1973), pp. 193–208. ⁵ Bayly, The Birth, p. 127. ⁶ P. W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics 1763–1848 (Oxford, 1994), pp. 606–28. ⁷ G. Spini, Mito e Realtà della Spagna nelle rivoluzioni italiane del 1820–21 (Rome, 1950). ⁸ Spitzer, Old Hatreds and Young Hopes, p. 271. ⁹ M. Wicks, The Italian Exiles in London 1816–1848 (Manchester, 1937), pp. 70–1.

A Liberal International

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After the revolutions, a small but extremely important part of this revolutionary civil society, including many key opinion-makers, moved outside their countries of origin to form liberal diasporas of Italian, Greek, Spanish, and Spanish American patriots. The promoters of such revolutions, the many supporters they found abroad—whether army officers, intellectuals, journalists or opposition politicians—and the exiled conspirators scattered around Europe thus constituted an international network of personal contacts and coordinated activities whose nature oscillated between illegal and legal. Conspiracy was in fact complemented by journalistic and political activities in respectable opposition journals and in public debates. Hundreds of people living and moving across different parts of Europe and beyond Europe made up a single community, and their political and intellectual leaders formed a republic of letters which debated the same problems irrespective of their geographical location. The scope of their initiatives affected all those countries, from Mexico to Greece, where the advancement of liberal objectives seemed to be at once necessary and possible. The networks of liberals and revolutionaries to which the Italian diaspora belonged testify to the development of a Europe-wide and also transatlantic civil society, whose objectives and political beliefs transcended national boundaries. Their commitment to collective action and their awareness of being part of the same common front demonstrate that transnational sociability is not the exclusive product of contemporary globalization, but was very much part of the social and political dynamics of the post-Napoleonic era.¹⁰ It is in this selfsame context that we need to locate the ideas and political concerns of the Italian diaspora which moved across Europe and the Americas between 1815 and 1835 and which will be the focus of the following discussion. The importance of global connections thus cuts across many political, intellectual, and social phenomena unfolding in the post-Napoleonic era in the transatlantic and Mediterranean world. To start with, these interconnected groups of opponents to the politics of the governments of the Restoration actively promoted the development of a public sphere across Europe and in the Americas. This sphere was growing freely in countries like France and England, where public opinion could increasingly be critical of governments, readerships were expanding at an unprecedented pace, and politics, thanks to the participation in public events and electoral campaigns of even those who had no right to vote, was becoming a mass phenomenon.¹¹ Latin America, too, following the revolutionary period and the emancipation, joined with this trend, since from the 1820s ‘periodical publications, secret and open political groups, public debate, ¹⁰ T. R. Davies, ‘The Rise and Fall of Trans-national Civil Society: The Evolution of International Non-Governmental Organisations since 1839’, City University, Working Papers on transnational politics, CUTP/0003 (London, 2008). ¹¹ On England see L. Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (London, 2003); on France R. Alexander, Rewriting the French Revolutionary Tradition (Cambridge, 2003).

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and intellectual exchange extended from Mexico to Rio de la Plata’.¹² In Italy and in other parts of Europe, by contrast, the public sphere was confined to the extremely limited readership of a handful of liberal journals. Indeed, it was only in the context of the revolutions that it could find its fullest expression in Spain or the Italian states. In this respect, the political diasporas had a twofold role. First, they made an important contribution to the rise of a public opinion hostile to the international order established in 1815. In France as well as the Low Countries, England, and the Americas, the exiles relentlessly promoted their political programme and attacked the conservative order in the liberal press. Journals such as the Revue encyclopédique and the Globe in Paris, the liberal press in Brussels, and the Edinburgh Review in Great Britain, hosted their writings. The diasporas served as intellectual bridges between the conservative regimes of their countries of origin and the debates taking place in France, England, and revolutionized countries. The exiles’ writings were often published near the border of Austrian Lombardy in the Swiss city of Lugano, from where they filtered through to the peninsula.¹³ Whenever censorship allowed, echoes of such European debates might be heard also in the Italian press, and in progressive journals such as the Annali Universali di Statistica in Milan and the Antologia in Florence. Given the common topics and common arguments covered by the weekly magazines and newspapers across the continent and even in the Americas, and the circulation of articles translated and published almost simultaneously in different countries, such a public sphere was becoming increasingly European and even transatlantic in nature, in spite of the constraints imposed by censorship. Second, this international community thrived on the common intellectual humus of liberalism, patriotism, and republicanism, and made its distinctive contribution to the development and transmission of these global intellectual currents. Indeed, republicanism and the new forms of patriotism developed among Italian, Greek, and Spanish American revolutionaries were heavily indebted to the French revolutionary tradition. Yet neo-roman liberty, with its emphasis on civic virtue as a vital precondition for the survival of the patria, was associated with a variety of different republican traditions. Its most radical, Robespierrian and Rousseauian version was preserved by secret societies, and found its quintessential expression in the old Brussels-based conspirator Filippo Buonarroti, a figure whose political importance was recognized everywhere in Europe. His Conspiration pour l’égalité, dite de Babeuf (1828), with its celebration of the Terror and condemnation of the Thermidor, became the Bible of European ¹² V. M. Uribe-Uran, ‘The Birth of a Public Sphere in Latin America during the Age of Revolution’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 42 (2000), 425–57. ¹³ F. Mena, ‘Giornalisti, editori, esuli’, in R. Ceschi (ed.), Storia del Canton Ticino, 2 vols (Bellinzona, 1998), i, pp. 149–66; G. Martinola, Un editore luganese del Risorgimento. Giuseppe Ruggia,(Lugano, 1985).


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radicalism.¹⁴ Another important source of inspiration for European republicans were the Americas. The emancipation of the Spanish American colonies provided republicanism with novel examples and renewed the appeal that the United States had continued to offer Europeans since their emancipation. Finally, an important strand of republicanism drew on the memory of modern Italian political history and of the Machiavellian tradition of civic humanism. This third strand, which was far more moderate than the Buonarrotian version, was inspired on the one hand by models of the medieval Italian republics, whose idealized combination of civic virtues, moderate government, and commercial values accounted for the great appeal of Sismondi’s Histoire des républiques italiennes, and, on the other, by the recently disappeared oligarchic republican city-states, in particular Venice. Bonapartism, as a political tradition based on the memory of the emperor, also thrived in Europe after 1815. His supporters saw the emperor as the embodiment of the principles of the revolution, and as a symbol of opposition to the restored governments. This political attitude and ‘liberal’ interpretation of Napoleon’s legacy compatible, it seemed, with parliamentary representation, had been facilitated by the emperor’s association with the liberal opposition during the ‘Hundred Days’.¹⁵ Liberalism was an even broader and vaguer category than republicanism, not least because it was precisely in the years following the end of the Napoleonic era that the term came to acquire a new set of meanings and was increasingly employed in political language across and beyond Europe. From Spain, where the term liberales designated the enemies of the French invader and in 1820 the supporters of the 1812 constitution, it migrated to Italy and also to South America. In France the term libéral gradually broke free of Napoleon’s politics, to become the antithesis of Napoleonic authoritarianism, and to embody many of the principles dear to the heart of the global opposition: constitutionalism, a revised international order, civil and political freedoms, gradual progress, and social reforms. There, too, liberals were a broad church, although sharing the belief in ‘putting liberty first’. In England, the term liberal had at first been a loan-word from Spain, and was originally used to describe events on the continent, but subsequently, in the 1820s, it was as a French import that it became common currency, being used to denote the reforming policies of the Whigs, the group of the Edinburgh Review, and the supporters of the 1832 Reform Bill.¹⁶ Liberalism was itself based on a number of different ¹⁴ A. Galante Garrone, Filippo Buonarroti e i rivoluzionari italiani (1828–1837) [1951] (2nd edn, Turin, 1975). ¹⁵ S. Hazareesingh, The Legend of Napoleon (London, 2004); idem, ‘Memory and Political Imagination: The Legend of Napoleon Revisited’, French History, 18 (2004), 463–85. ¹⁶ J. Leonhard, ‘Linguaggio Ideologico e linguaggio politico: all’origine del termine ‘‘liberale’’ in Europa’, Ricerche di Storia Politica, 1 (2004), 25–57; idem, ‘ ‘‘An Odious but Intelligible Phrase . . .’’ Liberal im politischen Diskurs Deutschlands und Englands bis 1830–32’, in Jahrbuch zur Liberalismus-Forschung (Baden-Baden, 1996), pp. 11–41.

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theoretical justifications, and liberty was defined in many different ways, whether in utilitarian terms, or in the form of civil liberties and the defence of the rights of man, as the ‘affirmation of individuality’, or as a ‘regulated’ or ‘restrained’ liberty serving as a bulwark against revolutionary excesses.¹⁷ In France, while a significant number of liberals, Constant and Lafayette among them, remained loyal to the revolutionary tradition and regarded the notion of natural rights as the foundation of their liberalism, Bentham and the English utilitarians provided others with justifications for the defence and expansion of all forms of liberty on the basis of the principle of utility.¹⁸ Political economy likewise offered powerful tools with which to critique the Restoration regimes and stimulated a discussion on the nature and limits of freedom. In France, Italy, England, and Scotland economists busy reassessing the legacy of Adam Smith in the light of post-revolutionary events provided the analytical instruments with which to assess the nature of globalization, the progress it was making, but also the threats it posed to Europe’s social and political stability. It should be noted that the above political currents, conceptually diverse and strategically at odds though they may have been, were in reality closely associated with one another. In the context of the politics of secret societies, whose aims and programme were often left vague, as well as in the political practice of the electoral campaigns and the parliamentary debates of restored France, the distinctions between the different types of liberal, republican, and Bonapartist were often blurred. As discussed in the previous section, the relationship between liberalism and Bonaparte’s political legacy had been the object of some controversy among Italian liberals until 1821, yet for most Italian patriots in exile Napoleonic institutions and reforms were never a legacy to be rejected in its entirety, but rather to be modified. After all, what mattered most were not distinctions within the opposition, but the common ideological enemies, the ‘reactionary party’, which included Metternich and his allies, the Italian monarchies, the Church and the ultra-royalists in France, the Tories (but not Peel and his supporters) and those aristocrats hostile to any form of representation. The transnational community to which the Italian exiles belonged produced new variants of such global trends, and the ‘liberal international’ constituted an important site for the negotiation and renegotiation of the notion of liberalism. The relationship and mutual interaction between these ideological currents and their impact on the political culture of the Italian diaspora and the Risorgimento will be explored in the following chapters. At the same time, and in spite of the overwhelmingly liberal and republican political identity of the exiles, we should not forget that some of them moved towards conservative, anti-revolutionary, ¹⁷ G. A. Kelly, The Humane Comedy: Constant, Tocqueville, and French Liberalism, (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 1, 2. ¹⁸ C. B. Welch, Liberty and Utility: The French Idéologues and the Transformation of Liberalism (New York, 1984); W. Thomas, The Philosophic Radicals: Nine Studies in Theory and Practice 1817–1841 (Oxford, 1979).


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or anti-national ideas during exile, and positioned themselves in the grey area between opposition to and support for the restored order. Ferdinando Dal Pozzo, for instance, a leading reformer and protagonist of the revolution in Piedmont, in 1833 famously wrote in favour of Austria’s presence in Italy, causing an uproar in the exile community. Likewise, another former member of secret societies, the Marquis Carlo Di Salvo, possibly by then a spy for the Neapolitan Bourbons in France, published pamphlets in support of the political status quo and against any constitutional reform in the Italian states.¹⁹ Finally, what made this community eminently international and what facilitated the exchange of ideas among its members was their constant mobility. This was especially true of the exiles, whose domicile in a country was determined by the permission granted by governments for political refugees to reside there, but also by their determination to follow whatever revolution was still unfolding. The example of Claudio Linati, who moved from Spain to France, and from there to Mexico and back again to Belgium, was not unusual. Many other members of such transnational communities who did not live in forced exile, such as General Lafayette, Edward Blaquiere, John Bowring, and General Fabvier were equally nomadic in their habits. Furthermore, assiduous epistolary exchanges consolidated intellectual contacts that seemed to be hardly affected by geographical distance. The intensity of such contacts was facilitated by another key feature of this internationalism, namely the polyglot talents of its protagonists, who were often able to write and speak in four languages, as their surviving correspondence demonstrates. French was obviously the international language of the day, to which many of the exiles could add Spanish and English. In the Mediterranean, Italian was the lingua franca, so relations with Greek patriots could be sustained in that language. The Marquis of Lafayette was perhaps the most prominent representative of this global community stretching from the Americas to Southern Europe. His biography literally linked together all the major events and causes of the age of revolutions, spanning the American and the French revolutions, the failed uprisings of the 1820s and those of 1830–1, when he was at once a pivotal figure both in Paris and in the European plots. As a public figure he embodied many of the values of the liberal international, from liberal to republican ideals, from patriotism and the support of all national movements to the universal values of the Enlightenment; his politics, through which he tried to reconcile people’s rights, republican values, and monarchy, could appeal both to the more conservative and to the most radical figures of the liberal opposition, and also to many revolutionaries. Moving as he did between conspiracy, public advocacy, and parliamentary politics, Lafayette’s activities and demeanour mirrored those ¹⁹ F. Dal Pozzo, Della felicità che gl’italiani possono e debbono dal governo austriaco procacciarsi (Paris, 1833); C. Di Salvo, Reflections upon the Late Revolutions in Europe (London, 1824). On Di Salvo see A. Omodeo, Studi sull’età della Restaurazione ( Turin, 1970), pp. 85–7.

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of the transnational community to which he belonged. A friend and supporter of all the exiles, many of whom regularly attended his weekly soirées in Paris, he succeeded in putting the global fight for freedom on the agenda of French national politics.²⁰ Indeed, not only did he seem to be an icon within the liberal international (Pepe described him as ‘one of the most generous philanthropists of this and of any former age’), but he was also a popular hero and charismatic figure, celebrated by the liberal press.²¹ Other typical representatives of this international community were Edward Blaquiere and John Bowring, figures likewise directly involved in all the political and revolutionary causes of the era, and similarly hybrid and eclectic in their ideological stance. Ostensibly, they were Benthamites, indeed close collaborators of Bentham himself, but in reality their support for Southern European patriotisms, their internationalism and their involvement in the Carbonari networks indicated a rapprochement with Spanish, Italian, and South American liberals. Blaquiere thus devoted his efforts to establishing an international bureau located in Paris for the exchange of information and ideas among liberals from all over the world.²² Given their close political and intellectual association with the exiles, the figures and intellectual groups I have identified here will recur in the following pages. In spite of their restlessness, the members of the exile community drew their ideas from, and gravitated to a handful of international intellectual centres whose importance transcended that of the countries in which they were located. Paris was undeniably the most important, no doubt because French culture in this period was making an outstanding contribution to the development of liberalism, given the urgent need to reassess the revolutionary legacy, and the turbulent political life and parliamentary politics made possible by the Charte of 1814. In 1821 the police reported the presence of almost 250 Italian exiles in the French capital.²³ In Paris, politicians like Lafayette and Benjamin Constant, economists like Jean-Baptiste Say, progressive journalists like Marc-Antoine Jullien and Armand Carrel not only set the tone of national intellectual life, but were also an important point of reference for the transnational community, and indeed for the Italian exiles in and outside Paris. Most of the exiled patriots discussed in the following chapters, even when not permanently based in Paris, either had ²⁰ L. Kramer, Lafayette in Two Worlds: Public Cultures and Personal Identities in an Age of Revolutions (Chapel Hill, NC, and London, 1996); S. Neely, Lafayette and the Liberal Ideal 1814–1824: Politics and Conspiracy in an Age of Reaction (Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL, 1991). ²¹ G. Pepe, ‘The Non-Establishment of Liberty in Spain, Naples, Portugal, and Piedmont, Explained’, The Pamphleteer, 24 (1824), 221–86, at p. 265. On Lafayette and the Italian exiles see LP, Carlo Pepoli to Lafayette, Paris 1832 (Series III, Correspondence, Box 77, folder 41); Francesco Tadini to Lafayette, 8 December 1825 (idem, Box 84, folder 10); T. Mamiani, ‘Parigi or fa cinquant’anni’, Nuova Antologia, 16 (1881), 594–6. ²² C. Gobli, ‘Edward Blaquiere: agente de liberalismo (1779–1832)’, in Cuadernos HispanoAmericanos, 350 (1979), 306–25. ²³ S. Carbone, I rifugiati italiani in Francia (1815–1830) (Rome, 1962), pp. 16–22. The French archives reported the existence of over 3,000 exiles moving between Belgium, France, England, Spain, and Switzerland.


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close contacts with the intellectual circles based there or visited and spent some months or even years there. Immediately after Paris came London, favoured by the exiles in the 1820s not least because of the high degree of toleration political refugees enjoyed in England, where the Alien Acts, providing for the expulsion of foreigners, were rarely applied, and indeed were repealed in 1826.²⁴ London was in truth as important a political centre as Paris, since the increasingly partisan nature of politics and the exceptional size of the public sphere on the one hand, the succession of transformations in foreign policies, the innovations in economic policy, the Reform Bill, and the reform of the Poor Laws between the 1820s and early 1830s on the other all stimulated debate regarding the nature of liberalism.²⁵ In London both the Whig aristocracy and Bentham’s circle were at the centre of an international network of progressive politicians and thinkers that stretched beyond continental Europe to include Latin American writers, patriots, and diplomats.²⁶ In both capital cities the groups at the right end of the liberal spectrum, the influential doctrinaires in Paris and the Whig Grandees in London had some sympathy for the Southern European conspirators. In fact, figures such as François Guizot, Victor Cousin, Prosper de Barante and Auguste de Staël were by no means radical or revolutionary, but were primarily preoccupied with the stability of the post-revolutionary order, and supported gradual political progress to match, not to anticipate, the conditions of society. For the doctrinaires, the press, rather than an excessively broad suffrage, by creating a channel of communication between society and government, could stabilize the constitutional regime. Unlike Constant or Lafayette, they rejected the key revolutionary—and liberal—idea of sovereignty residing in the people.²⁷ Likewise the Whigs, despite their claims to defend the people’s liberties and habeas corpus against monarchical encroachment, upheld a narrowly elitist and socially conservative vision of politics based on patronage. Yet representatives of the juste milieu like Victor Cousin had flirted with the Carbonari in the early 1820s, and Whig Grandees like Lord Holland had been sympathetic to the cause of the Italian and Spanish liberals from the outset.²⁸ Conversely, as I shall show in the following chapters, Santarosa, Foscolo, Pecchio, and many other Italian exiles were drawn to the ideas of these moderate groups, which did much to shape their political thought when in exile, and thereby also influenced ²⁴ B. Porter, The Refugee Question in Mid-Victorian Politics (Cambridge, 1979); A. Fahrmeir, Citizens and Aliens: Foreigners and the Law in Britain and the German States c. 1789–1870 (Oxford and New York, 2000). ²⁵ B. Hilton, A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People? England 1783–1846 (Oxford, 2006). ²⁶ L. Mitchell, Holland House (London, 1980); M. Williford, Bentham on Spanish America (Baton Rouge, LA, and London, 1980). ²⁷ P. Rosanvallon, Le Moment Guizot (Paris, 1985); A. Craiutu, Liberalism under Siege: The Political Thought of the French Doctrinaires (Lanham, MD, 2003). ²⁸ On Cousin and the Carbonari see Spitzer, Old Hatreds, pp. 221, 227; Kelly, The Humane Comedy, p. 148.

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Risorgimento moderate liberalism. The contacts between Italian revolutionaries and conservative liberals in England and France serve once more to demonstrate just how permeable the various ideological currents were. The presence of Sismondi, along with that of Etienne Dumont, made Geneva, also, a major international centre for liberal culture, and one frequented by foreign travellers and intellectuals, including many Italian exiles. Between Sismondi, Dumont (translator of Bentham’s work and a jurist in his own right), and Pellegrino Rossi, a Tuscan e´migré who was to become one of the most eminent constitutionalists in Europe, the ideas produced in Geneva on political economy, historical studies, and jurisprudence affected political and economic culture across the continent.²⁹ Brussels, like Paris and London, was host to an equally broad variety of political networks and communities, including several important exiles, from Filippo Buonarroti, and the former Conventionnels, to the moderate circle of Countess Costanza Visconti Arconati at Gaasbeek, which attracted some of the leading European politicians and intellectuals, ranging from Fauriel to Manzoni, from Quételet to Nassau Senior and Lord Lansdowne.³⁰ The following chapters will be devoted to discussing the role played by the exiles in a number of crucial political debates that preoccupied European and Spanish American public opinion and to the international liberal networks they belonged to in the twenty years after the fall of the Napoleonic Empire. After 1835, such networks and debates were no longer the same. Although in 1830, when France had become once more the centre of a revolutionary movement, many of the key figures of the events of the previous decade were still actively involved in transnational political activities, by the middle of the decade the political and intellectual context had changed. Lafayette and many exiles had died, while the rise of Mazzini as the central figure in the Italian diaspora had dramatically altered the political strategies and content of the emigration debates. Indeed, by then a new page in the history of the Italian diaspora, and better known perhaps, than the one described here, had been turned.³¹ But during the previous twenty years, the transnational context and the networks I have briefly sketched here, determined the ideological framework in which the Risorgimento was conceived as a political and intellectual project. As I shall demonstrate, the Risorgimento of exile was deeply affected by the reflections ²⁹ J. R. de Salis, Sismondi, 1773–1842. La vie et l’oeuvre d’un cosmopolite philosophe [1923] (Geneva, 1973), pp. 384 and ff. ³⁰ S. Luzzatto, Il terrore ricordato: Memoria e tradizione dell’esperienza rivoluzionaria ( Turin, 2000); on C. Visconti Arconti see R. Van Nuffel (ed.), L’esilio di Giovanni Arrivabene e il carteggio di Costanza Arconati, 1829–36 (Mantua, 1966). ³¹ On the revolutionary activities around 1830 see Galante Garrone, Filippo Buonarroti e i rivoluzionari. On renewed cooperation between Italian and Spanish exile see Claudio Linati to José Pinto, 24 February 1830, in HSA, Torrijos papers, Cartas particulares a` D. Ignacio Pinto. On Mazzini and the Italian diaspora see F. Della Peruta, Mazzini e i rivoluzionari italiani: Il partito d’azione 1830–1845 (Milan, 1974).


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and observations about representative governments, freedom and commercial development stimulated by direct observations made in England and in France. However, it was not exclusively concerned with theoretical issues and abstract principles. The exiles’ writings reflected practical and immediate revolutionary concerns, and were affected by specific political battles. Such events not only fostered notions of international solidarity, but also shaped the exiles’ national discourse and the political culture of Italian patriotism during the following decades. As I will demonstrate, their Risorgimento was inextricably linked with the Spanish revolution, the emancipation of Spanish America, the Greek war of independence, and the political controversies and transnational debates surrounding them.

2 The Spanish Revolution and European Freedom The Trienio Liberal (1820–3) represented the most important political experiment of early Spanish liberalism. Its political agenda and institutions were directly indebted to the activities and programme of the Cortes that gathered in Cadiz in 1810, during the French occupation of Spain. Its deputies bequeathed the revolutionaries of 1820 a democratic constitution based on the sovereignty of the people, and a programme of reforms that included the abolition of feudalism and the sale of Church property. The word ‘liberal’ had first been coined by the Spanish revolutionaries of the Cortes, and served to characterize the guiding principles of their constitution. The period of the French occupation likewise bequeathed ‘the generation of 1820’ a new patriotism inspired by the rebellion of the Spanish population who had risen and waged a guerrilla war against the French invader. Compared with any earlier period of Spanish history, however, the inauguration of the constitutional regime by virtue of Riego’s pronunciamiento was in many ways a new beginning. In particular, it occasioned an unprecedented development of the public sphere and a dramatic rise in the production and dissemination of printed material. Liberal and patriotic language circulated thanks to the establishment of patriotic societies, militant clubs in which political programmes and governmental decisions could be openly debated, and to the creation of organizations like the comuneros, a secret society and opposition political grouping that spread to most Spanish towns. Exceptionally fertile though this period was for the development of politics, a number of different factors may also be held to account for the fragility of the experiment and for its ultimate failure. To begin with, an unbridgeable rift divided the liberals into two distinct groupings, the moderados and exaltados. The moderados entertained a limited interpretation of the constitution and were opposed to an excessive democratization of political life. While by no means hostile to the sale of Church land and the abolition of feudalism, they were keen to introduce an aristocratic upper chamber. The exaltados, who dominated the life of the patriotic societies, considered themselves the most strenuous defenders of the constitution against the moderate liberals, advocated a more wholehearted implementation of the abolition of seigneurial jurisdiction, called for an extension of the national militias to all citizens, and used a decidedly Jacobin language. Crucially, while at

The Spanish Revolution

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the outset the peasants were not uniformly hostile to the liberals, the introduction of compulsory conscription and the burden of taxation caused them to side with reaction. Since 1821 guerrilla activities organized by clerics and other supporters of absolutism benefited from the increasing contribution of the peasantry to what became a genuine civil war dividing much of the country into two camps. The armed hostility of the masses towards the Constitutional army and the cities aligned with it, which was compounded by the military intervention of the French troops led by the Duke of Angoulême, marked the end of the liberal experiment in August 1823.¹ One of the political novelties of the Trienio Liberal was precisely the international appeal of its liberal agenda. With the collapse of the constitutional regime in Naples and the failure of the uprising in Milan and Piedmont, a stream of Italian exiles set off for Spain. The decision to settle in Spain reflected the degree to which the Spanish revolution and its constitution had been a model to the Italian revolutionaries of 1820–1. Indeed, Italian revolutionaries had fully identified their programme and political aspirations with those of the Spanish liberals, and the notion of liberalism with the Spanish constitution.² For most of the Piedmontese, Lombard, and Neapolitan former revolutionaries, Spain thus represented a ‘natural’ destination as the country which had precipitated the new revolutionary wave in Europe, and the one in which the revolution itself survived. Short-lived though it was, it was nonetheless a crucial political experience, and left an enduring mark on the memory of succeeding generations of the Risorgimento. The lessons drawn from it helped to shape the political culture of Italian patriotism in the years to come. Essentially, the Spanish experience provided the political culture of the exiles with three new elements: first, an almost utopian faith in the beneficial effects that the revolution would have on Spanish society and economy; secondly, an internationalist ideology that linked the defence of the Spanish regime with the survival of freedom in Europe; finally, a military strategy based on the experience of Spanish guerrilla warfare against Napoleon. While utopian and palingenetic expectations, as well as internationalist ideals, would resurface in other countries and during other revolutions, from then on the idea of a war for freedom waged by peasants ¹ On the period see A. Gil Novales, El Trienio Liberal (Madrid, 1980); idem, Las sociedades patrióticas (1820–1823): las libertades de expresíon y de reunión en el origen de los partidos políticos (Madrid, 1975). In English see I. Burdiel, ‘The Liberal Revolution, 1808–1843’, in J. Alvarez Junco and A. Shubert (eds), Spanish History since 1808 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 22–5., and C. J. Esdaile, Spain in the Liberal Age (Oxford, 2000), pp. 50–60. ² G. Spini, Mito e realtà della Spagna nelle rivoluzioni italiane del 1820–21 (Rome, 1950). On the importance of the 1812 constitution among Italian democrats see A. De Francesco, ‘La costituzione di Cadice nella cultura politica italiana del primo ottocento’, in idem, Rivoluzione e costitutioni: Saggi sul Democraticismo politico nell’Italia napoleonica 1796–1821 (Naples, 1996), pp.1 27–56; A. Gil Novales, ‘Consideraciones sobre el liberalismo español’, Rivista Storica Italiana, 108 (1996), 897–920; A. Bistarelli, ‘Vivere il mito spagnolo. Gli esiliati italiani in Catalogna durante il trienio liberal’, Trienio, 32 (1998), 5–14, and 33 (1999), 65–90.

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would be inextricably bound up with the Spanish experience. Admiration for the constitution and the notion of Spain as the homeland of freedom fostered high expectations among exiles. Indeed, their enthusiasm for the liberal regime established in Spain led them to depict it as a utopia, in which all their political and social hopes might be fulfilled. Just how deeply these expectations marked the psychology of the exiles, is evident in comments contained in their private letters at the beginning of their Spanish adventure. The exiles’ comments on Spain fit well into Bronislaw Baczko’s definition of utopia as ‘the idea-image of an alternative society, opposed to the existing social reality, and its institutions, rites, dominant symbols, system of values, norms of interdictions, hierarchies’.³ In the words of the Piedmontese officer Fiorenzo Galli, writing from Barcelona to his parents in Piedmont in 1821, ‘The climate, the opulence and thousands of other circumstances provide an image more perfect than Paradise. What is there that a political organization dictated by humanity, founded on the right of the people, and administered by justice cannot do? Italians come to Spain, or become Spaniards!’.⁴ Another Piedmontese exile, Giuseppe Chenna, provided an equally exalted description of Spanish society: ‘Here all is freedom, all is united. Men, women, animals, stones, and mountains all, all exudes nothing else but freedom, [who is the] Goddess loved by pure souls.’⁵ The idea of revolutionary Spain as the representation of a radically different society, one in which collective happiness could at last be achieved, runs through the comments of the exiles. Thanks to the revolutionary government Spain might, they believed, be launching a ‘Golden Age’ of unlimited progress, a fact they explained by invoking the idea of ‘social and political regeneration’, a crucial concept in the language of the Italian revolutionaries since 1796, used to describe the process of transition of a nation from despotism to freedom.⁶ Hence Pecchio’s belief that the revolution, by defeating the causes of Spanish backwardness, would also result in unprecedented prosperity for the whole population.⁷ Indeed, this attitude reflected the view that the Spanish revolution represented a turning point in the accomplishment of humankind’s unstoppable progress. According to Baczko’s conceptualization, this type of continuous and linear progress would situate utopia within historical time, as the ultimate realization of history itself.⁸ Even in the face of defeat, the ³ B. Baczko, Utopian Lights: The Evolution of the Idea of Social Progress (New York, 1989), p. 15. ⁴ Fiorenzo Galli to his parents, Barcelona, 21 April 1821, n. 300: AST, Affari Interni, Alta Polizia, Materie Politiche. ⁵ Giuseppe Chenna to his aunt, Bilbao, 6 October 1821: AST, Materie Politiche per rapporto coll’estero, Carte Politiche Diverse, 10, Corrispondenze intercettate. ⁶ On the meaning of regeneration see E. Leso, Lingua e Rivoluzione: Ricerche sul vocabolario politico italiano del triennio rivoluzionario 1796–1799 (Venezia, 1991), p. 153. See also S. Nutini, ‘ ‘‘Rigenerare’’ e ‘‘Rigenerazione’’: alcune linee interpretative’, in E. Pii (ed.), Idee e parole nel giacobinismo italiano (Firenze, 1990), pp. 49–63. ⁷ G. Pecchio, Sei Mesi in Ispagna nel 1821: Lettere di Giuseppe Pecchio [Madrid, 1821], in SP, p. 41. ⁸ Baczko, Utopian Lights, pp. 144 and ff.


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exiles believed that freedom, the inevitable result of the forces of civilization, was bound to resurface.⁹ As I shall demonstrate in the following chapters, this utopian mood was to remain a permanent feature of the exiles’ attitude to the countries they visited, whether in the grip of revolution or in the aftermath of winning independence. After Spain, similar utopian expectations were projected on to Spanish America and Greece. Another important legacy of the Spanish experience to the political culture of the Italian diaspora lay in the crucial contribution it made to the creation of an ‘internationalist ideology’ whereby the defence or promotion of freedom as a cause demanded the coordinated efforts of liberals in all European countries. The exiles’ internationalism found expression in a range of different activities and was conveyed in a variety of circumstances. To begin with, it led to cooperation between revolutionaries and liberals of diverse backgrounds and national origins in the founding of new secret societies. It seems that the Italian exiles played a major role in the organization of such societies in Spain and Portugal.¹⁰ Guglielmo Pepe and Pecchio, together with several Spanish liberals and General Lafayette, set up the Società dei Fratelli Costituzionali Europei in Madrid, which Portuguese liberals also joined. The promoters of the society believed that a successful struggle against the Holy Alliance could be waged only if there were cooperation between liberals throughout Europe.¹¹ Lafayette’s involvement in these transnational secret societies brought with it the support of French liberals and the Carbonari, who were disturbed by the rise of the ultras and firmly convinced that the defence of the French charter and the rights of parliament could be achieved only within a broader fight for liberalism in Europe.¹² Pecchio himself seems to have been responsible for introducing the Carboneria to Madrid.¹³ His involvement in these transnational secret societies alarmed a number of different police forces in Europe, to the extent that in 1823 a document of the French Foreign Office described him as ‘l’homme le plus au courant des affaires des révolutionnaires de l’Europe’ (the man best informed of the current revolutionary affairs of Europe).¹⁴ In England, Spanish exiles kept alive the society originally founded by Pepe and Pecchio in Madrid.¹⁵ Subsequently, various other attempts were made to organize societies on the basis of international collaboration. In 1826 a Paris-based Société Cosmopolite led by General Lafayette also linked liberals from different countries, while the ⁹ G. Pecchio, Journal of Military and Political Events in Spain in the Last Months (London, 1824), in SP, p. 151. ¹⁰ I. M. Zavala, Masones, comuneros y carbonarios (Madrid, 1971), pp. 95–122;. ¹¹ G. Pepe, Epistolario, ed. R. Moscati (Rome, 1938), pp. civ, cv, 228–9, 282–3. ¹² S. Neely, Lafayette and the Liberal Ideal 1814–1824: Politics and Conspiracy in an Age of Reaction (Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL, 1991), p. 221. ¹³ Zavala, Masones, comuneros, p. 104. ¹⁴ ANP, F.7, 6654, ‘Documents relative a` G. Pecchio’. ¹⁵ I. Castells, La utopía insurrecional del liberalismo (Barcelona, 1989), p. 39.

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Comitato per l’emancipazione Italiana, which included not only Italian exiles resident in England and France, but also French liberals, had close contacts with the Société.¹⁶ Although perhaps not full members of these organizations, John Bowring and Edward Blaquiere, who remained important reference points for all Italian exiles, became closely connected with this network of revolutionaries based in Spain.¹⁷ Internationalism resulted also in the involvement of the exiles in the military defence of the Constitutional regime in Catalonia. The contribution of Italian troops and officers, started spontaneously and often motivated by the exiles’ need to make a living, promoted the creation of ‘Legiones Liberales Extranjeros’ comprising both French and Italian volunteers, and the setting up of an international committee in Madrid to coordinate the defence of the country.¹⁸ This belief in the transnational dimension of the struggle for freedom also found journalistic expression. As I noted earlier, the Romantic culture of the Piedmontese and Lombard liberals prompted the belief that the intellectual input of different national cultures was needed to create a truly pan-European spirit of progress and freedom. Italian literature, to become truly national, had to be more European. These ideas were at the heart of the most ambitious intellectual venture initiated by the exiles in Spain, a literary journal published in Barcelona between 1823 and 1824, and significantly called El Europeo. The founders and journalists of El Europeo were two Italian refugees, the Piedmontese Fiorenzo Galli and the Lombard Luigi Monteggia, along with the Irish Charles Ernest Cook, the Catalans Bonaventura Carlos Aribau and Ramón López Soler. As they stated when announcing the launch of the journal, their ambition was to produce a new cultural product and an intellectual identity which would be quintessentially cosmopolitan in aspiration.¹⁹ Indeed, the review reflected a variety of contemporary literary influences, including Spanish, French, English, and Catalan literatures; yet the theoretical definition of Romanticism proposed by it was mainly derived from discussions in the Milanese Conciliatore, and in particular from the ideas of Ermes Visconti and Giovanni Berchet. Historians recognize that El Europeo introduced the theoretical principles of Romanticism into Spain for ¹⁶ Neely, Lafayette and the Liberal Ideal, pp. 174–5. ¹⁷ Pecchio, Tre mesi in Portogallo nel 1822, in SP, p. 65. See also letters of Count Luigi Porro to Lady Morgan, dated London 11 and 29 November 1822, in BNB, Milan, Aut.B., XXX, 531–2. ¹⁸ M. Morán, ‘La cuestión de los refugiados extranjeros. Politica española en el trienio liberal’, Hispania, 49 (1989), 985–1016. A. Debidour, Le général Fabvier: Sa vie militaire et politique (Paris, 1904), pp. 196, 211. ¹⁹ In Diario de Barcelona, 30 September 1823, quoted in R. M. Postigo, ‘Elements de procedència italiana a ‘‘El Europeo’’ (Barcelona, 1823–24)’, in G. Tavani and J. Pinell (eds), Actes del sisè colloqui internacional de llengua i literatura catalanes (Montserrat, 1983), 411–28, at p. 412.


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the first time, and it did so primarily thanks to the contribution of two Italian refugees.²⁰ Finally, as a result of their internationalism, the liberals believed that the revolution should be exported beyond the borders of Spain and their conspiracies given official support by the existing constitutional governments. In Madrid the exiles and their European friends found the most sympathetic supporters for this view among the exaltados. The exiles and their supporters conducted their political campaign in favour of exporting the revolution both through the secret societies and through an active engagement with the public activities of political clubs. At the inaugural meeting of one of the comuneros societies, whose members were generally associated with the exaltados, Pepe presided, and spoke in favour of Spain’s international commitment to constitutionalism.²¹ At the same time, in 1822, when a war between Russia and Turkey was thought to be imminent, Pecchio discussed with the comunero Moreno de Guerra a plan for a military expedition to Italy, to be financed and supported by the Spanish government.²² In spite of their best efforts, the Italian exiles failed to persuade the liberal governments of Spain to support their revolutionary projects in Italy. The moderate politicians heading the constitutional governments did not wish to give the impression that they were working to protect their regime from external intervention by exporting their revolution.²³ Whatever their real sympathies, the majority of the comuneros in the end did not support any concrete action either.²⁴ In the aftermath of the revolution, however, the Italian exiles and the other members of the transnational networks engaged in the Spanish revolution remained convinced that the Spanish revolution had been defeated because the Spanish governments had decided not to help Naples, Piedmont, and Greece, where similar revolutions were struggling to succeed.²⁵ As I shall discuss further, they also gave theoretical elaboration to the idea that foreign powers had the right and duty to intervene to defend other peoples’ insurrections in favour of national emancipation and constitutional freedoms. The most important political legacy developed out of the Spanish experience was the notion that the brave and uncorrupted peasant could make a particular ²⁰ On the influence of Lombard Romanticism on El Europeo see Postigo, ‘Elements de procedència italiana a ‘El Europeo’ and E. Caldera, Primi manifesti del romanticismo spagnolo (Pisa, 1962), pp. 3–20. ²¹ Gil Novales, Las sociedades patrióticas, pp. 682–3. ´ ²² Pecchio to Don Josè Moreno de Guerra, Lisboa, 15 May 1822, in M. Fernández Alvarez, Las sociedades secretas y los orígines de la España contemporánea (Madrid, 1961), pp. 81–2. ²³ Spini, Mito e realtà della Spagna, pp. 35, 45–57. ²⁴ G. Pepe, Memoirs: Comprising the Principal Military and Political Events of Modern Italy, 3 vols (London, 1846), iii, pp. 248–50. ²⁵ Pecchio, Sei Mesi in Ispagna, p. 15; idem, Journal of Military, p. 111; G. Pepe, ‘The Nonestablishment of Liberty in Spain, Naples, Portugal, and Piedmont, explained’, The Pamphleteer, 24 (1824), 221–86.

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contribution to the military struggle for freedom, an idea the exiles borrowed from Spanish patriotic discourse. This mythical invocation of the role of the peasantry in defending freedom had a more lasting effect on Risorgimento political culture than the memory of the Spanish constitution, which was not completely forgotten but lost its immediate appeal among the exiles soon after the collapse of the revolution in 1823.²⁶ While, according to eighteenth-century stereotypes, the Spanish were a proud but lazy people, corrupted by centuries of despotism and superstition, and loathe to take up arms, the anti-Napoleonic revolt following the French invasion in 1808 had paved the way for a new representation, based on the notion of valour and patriotism. Guerrilla warfare had been the primitive but effective means of defeating the Napoleonic armies.²⁷ This myth of a valorous, untainted peasantry owed much to Rousseau’s belief in the natural attachment to freedom, and in the courage of peoples uncorrupted by civilization.²⁸ The extent to which guerrilla warfare, rather than the military activities of the British army, ensured the victory against the French might have been exaggerated in the following years, but the courage and effectiveness of the Spanish peasantry became legendary throughout Europe.²⁹ This is why the memory of the anti-French rebellions still coloured the expectations of the Spanish liberals and their foreign supporters between 1820 and 1823, who were convinced that the peasantry could fight alongside them. Admiration for their courage recurs in the writings on Spain of many members of the liberal international active in Spain.³⁰ It was, however, Carlo Bianco di Saint-Jorioz, a Piedmontese democrat who fought in Catalonia and was a member of Riego’s general staff, who popularized the view that, as the Spanish peasants who had fought the French invader in small groups in the mountains had shown, guerrilla warfare could represent a successful strategy against conventional armies, and that such units could be used as a vanguard which would eventually grow into a full national army in Italy too. As he wrote in his Della Guerra nazionale d’insurrezione per bande, since Spain and Italy were similar in terrain and social structure, this model could be exported to Italy in order to prepare a national insurrection.³¹ Naturally, Blaquiere, Pecchio, and Bianco di Saint-Jorioz acknowledged that despotism and the influence of ²⁶ On the memory of the 1812 Constitution in the Risorgimento see De Francesco, Rivoluzione e Costituzioni, pp.127–56. ²⁷ Montesquieu, Lettres Persanes, ed. P. Vernière (Paris, 1960), pp. 163–68; D. Hume, ‘Of National Characters’, in T. H. Green and T. H. Grose (eds), Essays Moral, Political and Literary, 2 vols (London, 1875), i, p. 250. ²⁸ J. J. Rousseau, Discours sur les sciences et les arts, repr. in M. Launay ed., Oeuvres complètes, 3 vols (Paris, 1967–71), ii, pp. 59–63. ²⁹ C. Esdaile, Fighting Napoleon: Guerrillas, Bandits and Adventurers in Spain 1808–1814 (New Haven and London, 2004), pp. 1–7. ³⁰ See, for instance, E. Blaquiere, An Historical Review of the Spanish Revolution (London, 1822), pp. 444–6. ³¹ C. Bianco di Saint-Jorioz, Della guerra nazionale d’insurrezione per bande, applicata all’Italia: Trattato dedicato ai buoni italiani da un amico del paese (Italia, 1830). On guerrilla warfare


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the Catholic Church had gravely affected not only manners in general but also the civil and economic conditions of the country in particular.³² This recognition did not undermine their faith in the effectiveness of the strategy and, more importantly, in the real commitment of the Spanish peasantry to the revolutionary cause. Yet literary descriptions of the Spanish peasants, or the later celebration of their military virtues, contrasted with their actual conduct towards the end of the constitutional period. In Catalonia the Italian exiles would soon discover that the masses whom they had idealized were hostile towards the Constitutional government. Exalted representations of a perfect society, where freedom and happiness at long last prevailed, were bound to collapse in the face of the royalist reaction in Catalonia, when bands of peasants led by priests attacked the refugees with cruelty and violence. The exiles were thus horrified to discover that Spain was a ‘brutal’ country, and that the Catalan peasants were a mass of religious fanatics manipulated by the clergy.³³ As Carlo Beolchi vividly recalled in 1822: The simple and unrefined Catalan, as fanatical about religion as he is incapable of recognising deceit, gives credence to the rumours of those he believes to be incapable of lying, and with the villages thus being roused and the bands of insurgents formed, public order, security, property and the life of every respectable citizen are all a risk. A man only has to have a reputation for being a liberal, or for being favoured by the government, for the insurgents to burn him alive as a heretic, to burn his house down, to steal all his property and murder his entire family [. . .] Everywhere there are levies spreading terror, threats, the most atrocious acts of revenge, and all this in the name of a God of peace and mercy, and under the guidance of those meek pastors, to whom God entrusted the shepherding of his flock !!!!³⁴

Even Carlo Bianco, who later did more than anyone to propagate the myth of the uncorrupted virtues of the Spaniards and their natural attachment to freedom, in 1822 in a private letter wrote with some contempt that the Spanish and Portuguese peasants were ‘barbarous’, and their manners ‘African’.³⁵ Admittedly, there was no universal agreement on the possibility of exporting this model to Italy. In 1833, Pepe, another exile who had been involved in as revolutionary strategy in Italy see P. Pieri, Storia militare del Risorgimento (Turin, 1962), pp. 107–18, and ff. ³² G. Pecchio, Anecdotes of the Spanish and Portuguese Revolutions (London, 1823), p. 11. See also idem, Sei mesi, p. 9; Blaquiere, An Historical Review, pp. 441–3; J. Bowring, Observations on the State of Religion and Literature in Spain, Made during a Journey through the Peninsula in 1819 (London, 1819). ³³ Giovanni Godetti to Felix Berta, Coruna, 1 June 1822: AST, Materie Politiche per rapporto coll’estero, Carte Politiche Diverse, 10, Corrispondenze Intercettate, as n.2572. ³⁴ Carlo Beolchi to his father Federico, Barcellona, 5 July 1822: AST, Materie Politiche per rapporto coll’estero, Carte Politiche Diverse, 10, Corrispondenze Intercettate, n.2622 ³⁵ Bianco to Jean-Baptiste Mussino, Lisbona, 29 May 1822: AST, Materie Politiche per rapporto coll’estero, Carte Politiche Diverse, 10, Corrispondenze Intercettate, 2551.

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the Spanish revolution, wrote that the social and physical characteristics of Italy were too different from those of Spain to favour the adoption of guerrilla warfare as the main military strategy for a future insurrection. In Italy the clergy was hostile to the revolution, and the terrain did not provide such good cover for guerrilla groups. This was why a regular army would have to be deployed first, and guerrilla warfare according to the Spanish model could play only a subsidiary role.³⁶ Nonetheless, mobilization of the peasantry and guerrilla warfare remained one of the cornerstones of Risorgimento military theory, even if many observers agreed on the need to complement it with the action of a regular army. The notion of the patriotic and military virtues of the Spanish peasant led the Italian liberals astray, by fostering the delusion that they stood some chance of winning the support of the masses for their revolutionary projects, and reflects their disastrous lack of realism. Giuseppe Mazzini, who met Bianco in Marseilles in 1830, integrated this notion into the programme of the Giovine Italia, defining it as ‘the war of all nations emancipating themselves from a foreign conqueror’.³⁷ Writing in 1833 in support of Bianco’s faith in guerrilla warfare, Mazzini claimed that while in 1808 the Spaniards had been successful, in 1823 the French army had defeated the liberals because the Spanish government, dominated by moderates, had relied on a regular army, instead of calling upon the people to rise against the enemy. The fact that the peasants had actually been hostile to the revolutionaries, and that guerrilla warfare had been waged against them, was simply omitted by Mazzini.³⁸ This contrast between utopian representation and reality, between enthusiasm for the dawn of a new era and disappointment at the barbaric and backward condition of the population, would remain a key element of the exiles’ revolutionary experiences in other countries. Indeed, delusions about the actual readiness of peasants to rise in support of nationalist insurrections guaranteed the failure of many revolutionary attempts in the following decades. A myth forged to bolster the Italian patriots’ liberal ideology might be compelling, and could indeed provide a platform around which to encourage political mobilization, but in giving rise to such unrealistic expectations it was doomed to disappoint them. Once Spain, with the collapse of the revolution and the bitter experience of popular hostility, had lost its utopian connotations, the exiles looked for new ‘ideal cities’ where liberalism could thrive, and these they found in Greece and in the newly independent South American countries. Here, too, the patriots described political and social developments in the light of long-standing European tropes about American freedom that had little relationship with the real conditions of ³⁶ G. Pepe, Memoria su i mezzi che menano all’italiana indipendenza (Paris, 1833). ³⁷ On Mazzini and Bianco see R. Sarti, Mazzini: A Life for the Religion of Politics (Westport, 1997), pp. 50–1, 55–6; the reference is from Mazzini, Istruzione generale per gli affratellati nella Giovine Italia [1831], in SEI, ii, p. 53. ³⁸ G. Mazzini, Della guerra d’insurrezione conveniente all’Italia [1833], in SEI, iii, p. 225.


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the newly independent republics. While this tendency to idealize was combined, to a greater degree than in Spain, with some more concrete and realistic political analysis, utopian expectations and a tendency to transform historical facts and figures into models useful for their political programmes represented an important element in the liberalism of this generation.

3 In Search of New Models of Heroism: Revolutionary Leadership and Democratic Federalism in Spanish America The young Count considered nothing worthy of his attention except what might give his country a government by two Chambers. He gladly left Mathilde, the prettiest person at the ball, because he saw a Peruvian General enter the room. Despairing of Europe as Metternich had organized it, poor Altamira had fallen back on the idea that, when the States of South America became strong and powerful, they might restore to Europe the liberty that Mirabeau had sent over to them. (Stendhal, Scarlet and Black, Part Two, Chapter 8, ‘What kind of Decoration confers Honour?’)

I N T RO D U C T I O N The emancipation of the North American colonies had a powerful and lasting impact on the European political imagination, and accorded the United States a semi-mythical status so far as progressive audiences were concerned. European liberalism in the early decades of the nineteenth century continued to draw on ideas and tropes developed in the previous century by Enlightenment culture, and saw in the North American republic the realization of a number of key liberal values. In the writings of Brissot de Warville, Filippo Mazzei, Condorcet, and Saint-John de Crèvecoeur, American society embodied all the Enlightenment principles of liberty, toleration and progress, and was a place where human happiness could at last be achieved. For European observers America was a utopian site, on to which they projected their philosophical schemes, a perfect republic where either the virtues of the natural man might finally thrive, or social and material progress would be accomplished in a combination of material prosperity, liberty, justice, and equality. In his De l’influence de la révolution d’Amérique sur l’Europe (1786), Condorcet viewed America as a model for the rest of the world, and a vehicle for the dissemination of Enlightenment and

New Models of Heroism

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the destruction of ignorance globally.¹ Elaborating on Enlightenment themes, European liberals continued to contrast old, corrupt, and declining Europe with the new continent, and argued that civilization was abandoning Europe and taking root in the New World. In Guglielmo Pepe’s opinion, America was destined to become a new ‘centre of support to the freedom of Europe’, while ‘the decrepit despotisms of Europe . . . shudder at its ominous prosperity’.² Filippo Pananti went so far as to hope that ‘the first nation of the present day’ might in time gain a permanent foothold in the Mediterranean with a port and a navy to bring peace and stability and challenge British supremacy in the region.³ Others, however, tended to argue that so utopian a society could not possibly be transferred back to Europe. Endorsing another Enlightenment trope, Ugo Foscolo viewed in the abundance of farming land and the even distribution of wealth the special condition that ensured the durability and happiness of the American republic.⁴ With the failure of the 1820–1 revolution, the defeat of the constitutional regime in Spain and the temporary set-back of the liberal movement both in France and in the rest of Europe, America came to seem yet more appealing to the liberal cause. In particular, between 1824 and 1825 the tour of Marquis de Lafayette to the United States fostered a renewed enthusiasm for the New World in France and among European liberals. As Sylvia Neely has shown, the tour was accompanied by a flurry of publications and propaganda material which cast Lafayette as the hero of the two worlds and America as the land of freedom. The visit thus served not only to revive the popularity of Lafayette and his ideals, but also to reshape French liberalism: it publicized republicanism and, most importantly, a revolutionary model which was arguably more moderate and less bloody than the French one.⁵ It was on this occasion that Pepe, for a moment tempted to follow his friend and settle in America, published in several English papers a translation of the poem that Vittorio Alfieri had dedicated in 1782 to the general, depicted as a neoclassical hero, and to his involvement in the American revolution.⁶ The publication in Paris of the ¹ D. Echeverria, Mirage in the West: A History of the French Image of American Society to 1815 (Princeton, 1957); F. Venturi, La caduta dell’antico regime (1776–1789), I grandi stati dell’occidente, in idem, Settecento Riformatore, 5 vols ( Turin, 1969–90), iv, pp. 1, 3–145; R. Darnton, ‘The Craze for America: Condorcet and Brissot’, in idem, George Washington’s False Teeth, (New York and London, 2003), pp. 119–36. For the later period see R. Rémond, Les États Unis devant l’opinion française, 2 vols (Paris, 1962). ² G. Pepe, ‘The Non-establishment of Liberty in Spain, Naples, Portugal, and Piedmont, explained’, The Pamphleteer, 24 (1824), p. 265. ³ F. Pananti, Narrative of a Residence in Algiers; with Notes and Illustrations by Edward Blaquiere (London, 1818), p. 400. ⁴ U. Foscolo, Stato Politico delle Isole Jonie, in EN, 13, I, p. 28. ⁵ S. Neely, ‘The Politics of Liberty in the Old World and the New: Lafayette’s Return to America in 1824’, Journal of the Early Republic, 6 (1986), 151–71. ⁶ G. Pepe, Memoirs: Comprising the Principal Military and Political Events of Modern Italy, 3 vols (London, 1846), iii, p. 270. On Alfieri’s poetry on the American revolution see Venturi, I grandi stati dell’occidente, pp. 35–40.

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Revue Americaine (1826–7) edited by Armand Carrel and exclusively devoted to the political and economic affairs of the new continent, represented the culmination of this renewed interest for the Americas.⁷ Finally, this ‘American moment’ of French liberalism resulted in a revival of democratic federalism, which found in Lafayette, Carrel, Marc-René Voyer d’Argenson, and Benjamin Constant its foremost advocates and which, in place of corporative and premodern forms of political pluralism, was designed to promote individual rights through decentralization.⁸ European interest in the Americas was further enhanced in the 1820s by the emancipation of the South American colonies. As is well known, George Canning informally recognized the independence of some former Latin American colonies as early as 1825, when commercial treaties with Mexico, Colombia, and Buenos Ayres were signed.⁹ Yet this recognition came after many years of uncertainty, beginning in 1808 by the fall of the Bourbon monarchy and the de facto autonomy of the Spanish American territories, during which the American revolutions and the independence from Spain was seen by the European powers as a ‘western question’. Its solution irreversibly modified the geopolitical equilibrium of the world and subjected South America to British economic and political influence, though France and the United States continued to challenge it in the following decades. As Rafe Blaufarb has recently argued, the long period of political instability preceding recognition and the machinations of the European powers over the spoils of the Spanish Empire offered ‘opportunities for the adventurous and the unscrupulous’ which ‘illustrate the intertwining of interest and ideology in the revolutionary movement’.¹⁰ It is in this context that, implausible though it may sound today, the Italian exiles became involved in plots which linked the emancipation of the Spanish colonies with revolution in Italy. One of the Latin American representatives in London, Francesco Antonio Zea, vice president of Colombia, was responsible for the organization of a very ambitious international revolutionary plan. In 1822 he managed to obtain a two million pound loan for Colombia in London. Eager to obtain recognition for his country from the Spanish government, Zea convinced various liberals, Lafayette, Captain Romeo, Guglielmo Pepe, Colonel Maceroni, and Sir Robert Wilson among them, that, if Spain recognized Colombia, he would finance ⁷ On Carrel and the exiles see Pepe, Memoirs, iii, p. 364. In 1833 Armand Carrel wrote the introduction to Pepe’s Memoria su i mezzi che menano all’Italiana independenza. ⁸ On Constant’s federalism see O. Meuwly, Liberté et Société: Constant et Tocqueville face aux limites du libéralisme moderne (Geneva, 2002), pp. 81–4; P. Higonnet, ‘Le fédéralisme américain et le fédéralisme de Benjamin Constant’, in Annales Benjamin Constant, 8–9 (1988), 51–62. ⁹ J. Lynch, ‘Great Britain and Latin American Independence 1810–1830’, in Bello y Londres, segundo congreso del bicentenario, 2 vols (Caracas, 1980), i, pp. 33–51; On the period see now J. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492–1830 (Yale, 2006), pp. 369 and ff. ¹⁰ R. Blaufarb, ‘The Western Question: The Geopolitics of Latin American Independence’, American Historical review, 112 (2007), 742–63.


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a military expedition to Italy and would pay for any Spanish defence against French invasion.¹¹ More importantly, the debates surrounding independence of the colonies from Spain and the political life of the newly born Spanish American republics had important implications for the development of liberalism and provided much material for discussion among European and American patriots and republicans. Admittedly, the emancipation of the colonies was hardly a controversial matter for European liberal public opinion. Among European liberals, only the Spanish constitutionalists opposed emancipation, on the grounds that, once Bourbon despotism had been defeated, a constitutional regime would fully satisfy the needs of the Latin American elites.¹² Thus, during the constitutional period in Spain only some of the exaltados had unreservedly backed the demands of the overseas representatives. While in exile many Spanish émigrés continued to interpret the rebellion of the former overseas territories as a mere reaction against despotism and the birth of the republics as the withdrawal of Spanish liberty from Europe to the New World.¹³ More generally, however, European public opinion and liberal circles both in France and England agreed on the desirability of Spanish American independence. Their cause was not in fact perceived to be revolutionary, but was rather justified in terms both of the long-established negative reputation of Spanish colonial government, itself rooted in Enlightenment ‘black legend’, and of economic arguments against monopoly and in favour of free trade. The intrinsic appeal of the continent and of its emancipation was further enhanced by the abundant travel literature which flooded the European book market and which offered alluring descriptions of its unlimited natural resources available for exploitation.¹⁴ What varied, however, were the theoretical tenets used to justify emancipation. In England Jeremy Bentham, one of the staunchest supporters of the Spanish American cause, furnished the many Spanish American patriots of his acquaintance with intellectual tools to make their case. He justified independence on the basis of the greatest happiness of the greatest number, a principle he used to attack any and every form of colonial power and imperial government. For Bentham, even the Spanish liberals’ decision to grant the ‘Ultramaria’, as he called the ¹¹ G. Pepe, Epistolario, ed. R. Moscati (Rome, 1938), cv–cvii; idem, Memoirs, iii, p. 238. ¹² A. Gil Novales, ‘L’indipendenza americana nella coscienza spagnola’, Rivista Storica Italiana, 85 (1973), 1117–39. ¹³ C. Lancha, ‘La prensa liberal española frente al separatismo hispano-americano’ and C. Seco Serrano, ‘Blanco White y el concepto de ‘‘Revolución atlantica’’, both in Gil Novales (ed.), La prensa en la revolución liberal: España, Portugal y América Latina, 2 vols (Madrid, 1983), i, respectively at pp. 307–17 and 265–75. ¹⁴ G. Paquette, ‘The Intellectual Context of British Diplomatic Recognition of the South American Republics, C. 1800–1830’, Journal of Transatlantic Studies, 2 (2004), 75–95; N. Leask, ‘Introduction’, to Latin America and the Carribean, in T. Fulford and P. J. Kitson (eds), Travels, Explorations and Empires: Writings from the Era of Imperial Expansionism 1770–1835, 8 vols (London, 2001), vii, pp. vii–xxi.

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Spanish overseas colonies, equal political rights under the 1812 constitution was in contradiction with their wish to maintain the notion of an empire, and with the Americans’ own desires.¹⁵ Among the many intellectuals who spoke on the matter, Dominique de Pradt was the most widely published and most influential in Europe. Besides exhibiting the usual contempt for Spanish government, which was likened to Turkish despotism, de Pradt placed special emphasis on the argument that independence was the final stage of a natural process. He was a staunch Anglophile who believed that Britain’s economic supremacy in the world was a guarantee of Latin American independence, since commerce, rather than political domination in the region, was England’s sole concern. De Pradt was in fact a great believer in Smith’s free-trade principle and its beneficial effects: trade itself was the main stimulus for independence and would be the main cause of the new republic’s future prosperity, and trade therefore justified both the independence of the Americas and the British Empire’s commercial supremacy.¹⁶ The Italian exiles, for their part, did not resort either to utilitarian calculations or to complex economic arguments when voicing support for South American emancipation. Though divided on the benefits of British hegemony in the region, they viewed the emancipation as an extension of their own cause in Europe, violently disagreed with the position of the Spanish liberals and concurred with Blaquiere that it was absurd ‘to continue a war against principles in the New World which they were fighting to sustain in Europe’.¹⁷ They thus shared the disdain of European and American liberals for Spanish despotism, often pitched in terms borrowed from Raynal, and extended the Enlightenment tropes of decadence and progress, and of liberty moving from Europe to the Americas, which had already been applied to the United States, to political events in Spanish America.¹⁸ Though agreed as to the rights of the South American colonies to selfdetermination, European liberals were profoundly divided over the nature of some of the newly constituted political regimes. In particular, Simón Bolívar’s own career would become the object of an international dispute about the ¹⁵ M. Williford, Jeremy Bentham on Spanish America (Baton Rouge, LA, and London, 1980); on Bentham’s anti-imperialism see now also J. Pitts, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France, (Princeton, 2005), pp. 103–22. ¹⁶ D. Brading, The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots and the Liberal State (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 558–60; D. Dufour de Pradt, Des Colonies et de la révolution actuelle de l’Amerique, 2 vols (Paris, 1817), ii, p. 198. ¹⁷ E. Blaquiere, ‘Introduction’, to G. Pecchio, Anecdotes on the Spanish and Portuguese Revolutions (London, 1823), p. xix. Pepe, Memoirs, iii, p. 50. Orazio Santangelo, for instance, was hostile to British commercial hegemony in the Americas (Santangelo, Las quatro primeras discusiones del Congreso de Panamá tales como debieren ser [Mexico, 1826], pp. 102, 120, 122). ¹⁸ Raynal is quoted by G. C. Beltrami Le Mexique, 2 vols (Paris, 1830), ii, p. 368.; and tropes of European decadence and American progress can be found in Pepe, ‘The Non-Establishment’, p. 252; Santangelo, Ottimestre Costituzionale, quoted in L. G. Rusich, Un Carbonaro Molisano nei due mondi (Naples, 1982), p. 31; Pecchio, ‘Guatemala’, Part II, New Monthly Magazine, 16 (1826), 63–74, p.74.


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nature of his constitutional reforms and their compatibility with the principles of liberalism. When in 1826 Bolivia declared its independence and Bolívar was asked to draft a constitution, he introduced life presidency and left the representative bodies with no more than a modicum of legislative authority. This event raised doubts as to his ultimate political ambitions, since he seemed determined not to surrender his dictatorial power, and even to covet a crown. The most prominent commentators on the nature of Bolívar’s constitution and his liberal credentials were Constant and the abbé de Pradt, who here found themselves in total disagreement with each other. While Constant upheld the principles of representative government and deplored the authoritarian nature of Bolívar’s constitution, the abbé de Pradt justified the Libertador’s political choice with reference to Latin America’s specific historical and social conditions.¹⁹ Such divergences of opinion about Bolívar’s bid to secure dictatorial powers were part of a broader, transnational debate over the constitutions of the new republics. These debates involved both European and Spanish American liberals, and concerned the roles of federalism and centralism in the consolidation and survival of the American republics, and their compatibility or otherwise with freedom. Bolívar’s distrust of federalism, which he deemed to be unfeasible in South America because of the weakness and instability of the republics, contrasted with the opinion of many other Spanish American liberals, both conservative and radical, who identified freedom with federalism and believed that only local and state government could foster civil accountability. These disagreements reverberated also in the European press, in particular in the journals of the Spanish émigré community in London, or in publications of prominent Spanish American liberals based in Europe. For instance, in 1826 the Mexican diplomat and liberal Vicente Rocafuerte published in London, with the editorial support of the Spanish exile José Canga Argüellas, a passionate defence of Mexican, and more generally of American federalism. In response to the criticisms of a Chilean liberal, Rocafuerte drew extensively upon the Federalist papers, arguing that love for one’s region or province, far from undermining patriotism, was its surest foundation.²⁰ What these debates show is the interconnectedness of European and South American liberal and revolutionary ideologies, as well as the entanglement between European and American patriotisms. During these very years the Creole elites devoted their intellectual energies to the creation of separate national ¹⁹ A. Filippi, ‘Legitimidad, instituciones juridico-politìcas y formas de gobierno en la polemica entre monarquicos y republicanos de Gran Colombia y de Francia (1828–1831)’, in idem, (ed.), Bolívar y Europa, en las crónicas el pensamiento político y la historiografia, 3 vols (Caracas, 1986–95), i, pp. 288–309;. On Bolívar’s constitutional thought see A. Scocozza, ‘Le idee costituzionali di Simon Bolívar’, Atti dell’Accademia di Scienze morali e politiche, 89 (1978), 218–36. ²⁰ Cartas de un Americano sobre las ventajas de los gobiernos repúblicanos federativos (London, 1826), pp. 100–1. On this debate see J. E. Rodriguez, The Emergence of Spanish America: Vicente Rocafuerte and Spanish Americanism 1808–1832 (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1975), pp. 184–8.

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identities. They did so by rewriting their historical past, by discussing the intellectual roots of their revolution, and by reflecting upon the institutional and legal framework of their national independence.²¹ These intellectual activities did not take place exclusively in the Americas, however, but owed much to the creative efforts of American diplomats, Spanish exiles, and British entrepreneurs based in Europe, and to the influence of newspapers, periodicals, and visual material devoted to the American market, published in London and shipped from there to the new republics.²² The reinvention of America was, in Mary Louise Pratt’s words, ‘a transatlantic process that engaged the energies and imaginations of intellectuals . . . in both hemispheres’.²³ Prominent politicians and intellectuals influenced by Spanish liberalism—among them the Spanish American Emanuel de Gorostiza, Vicente Rocafuerte and José Mariano Michelena, who represented the Mexican government in Europe in the 1820s—acted as cultural mediators between European and American radicalism. Bentham and de Pradt corresponded at length with leading Spanish American patriots, and the former, in particular, did his utmost to persuade Bernardino Rivadavia, Simón Bolívar, and Cecilio del Valle to introduce his constitutional codes and legislative proposals in their own countries. The Italian exiles in England, France and Belgium had direct contact with Spanish American liberals, the diplomatic representatives of the new republics in Europe, and with the European circles so intensely interested in South American politics. In London Giuseppe Pecchio and Fortunato Prandi were directly involved in the exchanges between Bentham’s circle and the Guatemalan patriots.²⁴ A case in point is the correspondence between Giuseppe Pecchio and José Cecilio del Valle, the father of Guatemalan independence, who corresponded with many other European writers, Humboldt, Bentham, and de Pradt among them. Their letters, written between 1825 and 1833, provide a fascinating insight into the complex process through which the circulation of ideas on either side of the Atlantic fostered new understandings of the relationship between Europe and America, and added new elements to the national identities which were just then in the process of being formed. Through their contacts with Europeans, Latin American intellectuals ‘facing the new republican era [ . . . ] selected and adapted European perspectives as they sought to create decolonized values and hegemonies’.²⁵ In Valle’s eyes, Pecchio and his other European correspondents were enlightened men, whose superior culture would play a vital ²¹ Brading, The First America, and for Mexico E. Florescano, Memory, Myth, and Time in Mexico: From the Aztecs to Independence (Austin, 1994); idem, Historia de las historias de la nación Mexicana, (Mexico City, 2002). ²² J. Ford, ‘Rudolph Ackermann: Publisher to Latin America’, in Bello y Londres, i, pp. 197–24. ²³ M. L. Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London and New York, 1992), p. 112. ²⁴ Pecchio to Valle, 6 May 1830, in Cartas Autógrafas de y para José Cecilio del Valle (Mexico City, 1978), pp. 496–8; P. Herrera to J. Bentham, (1826?), British Library, Add. Mss. 33546, Fos.108–9; S. Austin to Bentham, 18 December 1826, in Williford, Jeremy Bentham, p. 11. ²⁵ Pratt, Imperial Eyes, p.112.


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role in steering Guatemala towards the path of progress. He was keen to receive publications from Pecchio (including the works of the Italian economists and of Cesare Beccaria, whose ideas he quoted in speeches, as he proudly reported back to his correspondent). Pecchio counselled Valle on economic and political matters, advising him to create a national guard, to promote education among the masses, to sell off Church land, and, by so doing, to win new supporters to the republic and to turn Guatemala into a nation.²⁶ For his part, Pecchio acted as cultural mediator in endorsing and disseminating the self-fashioned cultural and historical identity of the Creole patriot, publishing between 1825 and 1826 the very first article on Guatemala in the British press. In it he praised the country’s federal constitution, gave an enthusiastic account of its economic potential, and endorsed the Creoles’ historical ‘indigenismo’, which constructed a fully fledged Guatemalan national identity on the basis of a reinterpretation of America’s pre-conquest past and defended the local civilizations against their detractors.²⁷ By contrast with Pecchio, however, many of his compatriots settled, or spent many years in Spanish America before returning to Europe, either by way of Spain or via France or England. The new countries offered abundant economic opportunities, while at the same time promising to fulfil their political dreams.²⁸ In the next section I shall discuss the direct involvement of the Italian exiles in the politics of post-emancipation Mexico. Their discussion and activities there demonstrate the participation of the Italian patriots in the newly revived transnational political debates on the compatibility of federalism and of dictatorial powers with liberalism staged on both sides of the Atlantic. They also show how American federalism had an impact on their political culture and provide further evidence for the existence of an ‘American moment’ in Risorgimento culture. Finally, the exiles’ opinions on these matters are of broader relevance to the history of the Risorgimento as they can cast some light on Risorgimento federalism in general, whose nature and objectives have proved more than a little controversial, and on the ways in which military heroism was redefined after the Napoleonic era. Risorgimento federalism during the Restoration has been dismissed as the preferred option of the Italian states’ oligarchic elites, who wished to maintain their regional power base and were hostile to any idea of nationhood based on popular sovereignty. In Marco Meriggi’s words, after the Napoleonic period ‘the main principle of the new national programme was independence of the ²⁶ The correspondence is published in Cartas Autógrafas, pp. 425–498. On Valle see L. E. Bumgartner, José del Valle of Central America (Durham, NC, 1963). ²⁷ Pecchio, ‘Guatemala’, Part I, New Monthly Magazine, 14 (1825), 578–93. The article was republished as Bosquejo de la Repùblica de Centro America. Escrito en inglès por el Conde de Pechio; i traducido al espanol por M.S.-Guatemala. Imprenta de la Union. 1829. On ‘Historical indigenismo’ see D. Brading, The Origins of Mexican Nationalism (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 48–55. ²⁸ Linati to Panizzi, 18 January 1824, in L. Fagan (ed.), Lettere ad Antonio Panizzi di uomini illustri e di amici italiani (1823–1870) (Florence, 1880), p. 21.

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individual regions: from the foreigner, and from centralised institutions’. It was against the national and centralizing project of Napoleon, and ‘had little to do with the democratic and republican ideals of the French revolution’. For Meriggi a democratic federalism remained a very marginal and minority stance.²⁹ Vittorio Criscuolo has reaffirmed the profound difference between the democratic federalism of the revolutionary period in Italy and that of the Risorgimento, arguing that this latter was primarily concerned with the protection of the social, cultural, and political specificities of the various territories of the peninsula, in short with local self-government, rather than with nation-building.³⁰ These views are in turn linked to the idea that Risorgimento federalism was fundamentally moderate, oligarchic and anti-democratic in nature, an interpretation which seems to be confirmed by Filippo Buonarroti and Giuseppe Mazzini, who saw unity as the only means to defeat aristocracy, and a federalist stance in Italy as no more than a modernized defence of particular interests.³¹. By contrast, Antonino De Francesco has recently unearthed the presence of an Italian democratic federalism in the aftermath of 1799, and has thereby questioned the opposition between the revolutionary and the Risorgimento variants.³² The instability of Mexican politics, the authoritarian tendency of the republican elites, and the propensity of the new republic to fall prey to competing military leaders provided ample opportunities for the exiles to comment on the merits and shortcomings of revolutionary leadership, on the nature of military heroism, and on the compatibility or otherwise of dictatorial powers with liberalism. Latin America served as a laboratory for the study of democratic and liberal military heroes. A product of the new political culture of the French Revolution, the hero as an individual of exceptional talents leading the nation against despotism to win freedom, had found in Napoleon a powerful personification. Although the myth of Napoleon developed after his death in Europe elaborated on these themes, many Italian patriots and former Napoleonists were searching for models of heroism at least in part distinct from that of Napoleon, since his regime had also been despotic in nature, and his legacy ambiguous.³³ The revolutions of Spanish America had their own military heroes who, like Bolívar, were often tempted to assume dictatorial powers. What the exiles’ ²⁹ M. Meriggi, ‘Italy’, in O. Dann and J. Dinwiddy (eds), Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution (London, 1988), pp. 199–212, at p. 212; idem, ‘Centralismo e federalismo in Italia. Le aspettative preunitarie’, in O. Janz, P. Schiera and H. Siegrist (eds), Centralismo e federalismo tra Otto e Novecento: Italia e Germania a confronto (Bologna, 1997), pp. 49–63. ³⁰ V. Criscuolo, Albori di democrazia nell’Italia in rivoluzione (1792–1802) (Milan, 2006), pp. 103–22. ³¹ F. Buonarroti, ‘Riflessi sul governo federativo applicato all’Italia’ [1831], in A. Saitta, Filippo Buonarroti. Contributi alla Storia della sua vita e del suo pensiero, 2 vols (Rome, 1950), i, pp. 192–5; ii, pp. 193–7. ³² A. De Francesco, Rivoluzione e costituzioni: Saggi sul Democraticismo politico nell’Italia napoleonica 1796–1821 (Naples, 1996). ³³ L. Mascilli Migliorini, Il mito dell’eroe: Italia e Francia nell’età della Restaurazione (2nd edn, Naples, 2003).


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comments demonstrate is their conversion to a democratic brand of heroism and their rejection of any dictatorship that was not temporary and the product of exceptional circumstances.

E N G AG I N G I N T H E P O L I T I C S O F T H E M E X I C A N R EVO LU T I O N Emigration from Europe had a substantial intellectual and political impact on the early days of the Republic of Mexico. Among the emigrants, a small group of Italian exiles became closely involved in the political controversies of the republic, and were eventually expelled. In 1826, on their arrival from Europe, Claudio Linati and a fellow exile, Fiorenzo Galli, opened a printing shop, and founded a literary and political journal, El Iris, with a Cuban exile, the poet José Maria Heredia, whose aim was that of ‘civilizing this semi-barbarous people’.³⁴ Another exile to make a significant impact on Mexican politics was Orazio Santangelo de Attellis, who had fought with the constitutional forces in Spain.³⁵ What made their political activities so important and, at the same time, so divisive, was their direct involvement in the violent clashes between the two main factions dividing Mexican politics in the aftermath of the approval of the 1824 federal constitution, and their commitment to reinforcing, and to sustaining, intellectually, the radical elements in Mexican politics. Others, like Giacomo Costantino Beltrami, toured around the country and met key politicians, publishing their views on Mexico in Europe.³⁶ Dependent on the structure of two distinct Masonic lodges, the political landscape of Mexico was divided between the Yorkinos, who represented the more radical group, and the Escoceses, who were politically more conservative. Indeed, the two factions broadly reflected the priorities of different social groups, the Yorkinos being supported by the provincial middle classes and the urban masses, while the Escoceses were backed by the great landed interests and the military sectors, who in turn controlled the rural population. Far from being fully fledged political parties, the Yorkinos and Escoceses were masonic lodges in which allegiances to specific groups counted for as much as political inclinations. The Yorkinos upheld federalism as a fundamental aspect of Mexican emancipation, and one to be defended against the Escoceses’ efforts ³⁴ L. G. Rusich, ‘Esuli dei moti carbonari del 1820–21 nel Messico’, Rassegna Storica del Risorgimento, 71 (1984), 419–37. On El Iris, see now M. E. Claps Arenas, ‘El Iris. Periódico crítico y literario’, Estudios de Historia Moderna y Contemporánea de México, 21 (2001), 6–29. ³⁵ On his activities in Mexico and the States see A. Solà, ‘Contribució a la biografia d’Orazio de Attellis, Marquès de Santangelo, revolucionari cosmopolita (1774–1850)’, in N. Escandell Tur and I. Terradas, Història i antropologia a la memòria d’Angel Palerm (Barcelona, 1984), pp. 425–53; Rusich, Un Carbonaro molisano. ³⁶ Beltrami, Le Mexique.

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to revert to a more centralistic management of the state, in accordance with the colonial tradition. Accusing the Escoceses of representing the interests of the Spanish elites of Mexico, the Yorkinos were violently anti-Spanish and favoured an alliance with the United States of America. It was with this faction, and their political ideas, that the label of ‘liberal’ was associated in Mexico. In the late 1820s the disputes opposing Yorkinos and Escoceses resulted in personalized conflicts and civil wars between military leaders who fought for the control of the state. In this context, the radical leaders increasingly emphasized the need for provincial and local autonomy, and argued that sovereignty lay in the people and not, as stated in the 1824 constitution, jointly in the nation and the states.³⁷ Among the Yorkinos Lorenzo de Zavala was the Mexican politician most closely connected with the Italian exiles.³⁸ Zavala linked his radical federalism with an open hostility to the Catholic Church and its influence on Mexican society and with a defence of religious tolerance, combatted the interests of the ecclesiastical and military hierarchies sanctioned by privileges still recognized by the 1824 constitution, and favoured the redistribution of Church land, a measure designed to tackle poverty in the rural areas.³⁹ Through Zavala, Santangelo and the other exiles were introduced to the world of the Masonic Lodges of Mexico, attended Masonic banquets held in his residence, and met other radical politicians, among them Andrés Quintana Roo. Together, Roo and Santangelo founded a ‘National institute for education’ in Mexico City.⁴⁰ What drew the exiles to the Yorkinos was their support for the federalist cause. Indeed, the defence of federalism became one of the central features of the exiles’ engagement in Mexican politics. Their belief was that the federal option would serve to consolidate the nation, and that it was the only system regulating power between centre and periphery that was compatible with freedom. Evidence of the exiles’ support for Mexico’s federal constitution is provided by Giacomo Costantino Beltrami, who travelled extensively in Mexico between 1824 and 1825, and back in Europe wrote a travel book recounting his experience, Le Mexique (1830). In Beltrami’s view, centralism concentrated power in the hands ³⁷ For an account of the politics of the period see M. P. Costeloe, La Primera República Federal de México (1824–1835) (Mexico, 1975), pp. 189 and ff; T. E. Anna, Forging Mexico 1821–1835 (Lincoln, NE, 1998), pp. 210–68; J. Lynch, The Spanish Revolutions 1808–1826 (2nd edn, New York, 1986), pp. 295–340. T. S. Di Tella, National Popular Politics in Early Independent Mexico, 1820–1847 (Albuquerque, NM, 1996), pp. 187–229. On the discourse on popular sovereignty in the radical press see especially Anna, Forging Mexico, pp. 211–13, 21. On sovereignty in the 1824 constitution see J. E. Rodriguez, ‘The Constitution of 1824 and the Formation of the Mexican State’, in idem (ed.), The Evolution of the Mexican Political System, (Wilmington, DE, 1993), pp. 71–104, and esp. pp. 85–6. ³⁸ O. Santangelo, Statement of Facts relating to the claim of Orazio de Attellis Santangelo, a citizen of the United States, on the Government of the Republic of Mexico, (Washington, 1841), passim. Santangelo’s Las cuatro primeras discusiones had been translated and dedicated to Zavala. ³⁹ On Zavala’s politics, see W. Fowler, Mexico in the Age of Proposals, 1821–1853 (Westport, CT, 1998), pp. 171–89. ⁴⁰ Santangelo, Statement of Facts, p. 10.


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of a few, and therefore led to despotism.⁴¹ Like many of the Mexican patriots who had drafted the 1824 constitution, he considered the federalist option to be an appropriate means of building and uniting the new nation, and not a dangerous and slippery slope towards the disintegration of the state.⁴² Comparing the Mexican federalist model to the Achaean League, Beltrami stressed the independence and unassailable autonomy of each constituent element, as well as emphasizing the contribution that one and all would make to the country’s defence.⁴³ However, the most complex assessment of Mexican federalism was provided by Orazio Santangelo. Santangelo had been expelled from Mexico in July 1826 as a result of his outspoken support for Zavala and the American consul, Poinsett, who promoted closer ties between the United States and Mexico.⁴⁴ Writing from New Orleans between 1832 and 1833, when peace and legality had been temporarily re-established after years of civil war, Santangelo read the last few years of political instability in Mexico in the light of the debate between centralists and federalists. His account of the events leading to the 1832 truce shows him to have been conversant with the most radical positions in Mexican politics. For Santangelo, the instability of Mexican politics between 1828 and 1832 was due not to the inherent weakness of federalism, but rather to the permanence of laws and institutions incompatible with it, and to the flaws of the constitution. The events leading up to 1832 proved that, so far as the majority of the Mexican population were concerned, liberty, national sovereignty and federalism were inextricably linked. Moreover, the geographical and social conditions of Mexico meant that centralism was never a viable option: ‘Centralize Mexico, and you will have a Sultan in Mexico, and in each province a three-tailed pacha’.⁴⁵ For Santangelo, it was the abolition of all military and ecclesiastical privileges, a legacy of the despotic and centralized Spanish colonial period, that would strengthen the federal system and stabilize the republic. In the exiles’ view federalism thus represented the only system compatible with equality of rights as against privilege and oligarchy. Rather than demonstrating the need for further central authority, for Santangelo the widespread popular support for the Yorkino leader Vicente Guerrero pointed to the existence of a national aspiration which was democratic and federal in spirit. In particular, Santangelo saw in the indirect election of the President by the States’ assemblies a restriction upon the national ⁴¹ Beltrami, Le Mexique, i, p.64. ⁴² Ibid., i, p. 149. On Mexican federalism see T. E. Anna, ‘Disintegration is in the Eye of the Beholder: Mexican Federalism and Early Nationhood, 1821–1835’, in A. Mcfarlane and E. Posada-Carbò (eds), Independence and Revolution in Spanish America: Perspectives and Problems Nineteenth-Century Latin American Series N.3, (London, 1999), pp. 177–92. ⁴³ Beltrami, Le Mexique, ii, pp. 232–33. ⁴⁴ On the reason for the expulsion see Solà, Contribució a la biografia. ⁴⁵ ‘Considérations sur la Convention conclue à Zavaleta’, L’Abeille, 24 January 1833, p. 3.

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will. In his view it needed to be modified with a new direct presidential election.⁴⁶ This impassioned defence of federalism went hand in hand not only with support for notions of popular sovereignty but also with a concern for the transformation of Mexico into a nation. Beltrami warned the Mexican Creoles against the tendency of each and every one of them to think that they were the only true patriots, and thus to aspire to leadership over all the rest. As a result of this attitude ‘each of them makes his own separate republic; force and union are missing, because there is no agreement, mutual esteem and trust; hence the audacity of the most miserable enemy of the new institutions, who never gives up hope of the return of despotism’.⁴⁷ It was precisely against these threats that Beltrami advocated a greater spirit of unity among the Mexicans—a moral force which, in his view, accounted for the strong patriotism and national spirit existing among the English, which was the very foundation of their power.⁴⁸ Combining Jacobin and Napoleonic memories, the exiles proposed measures to create the nation from below, by encouraging civic virtues and active participation, and from above, by enforcing military discipline, order and the repression of ‘anti-social’ behaviour. Just before the elections of 1826, Linati’s articles in El Iris reminded its readership that the bolstering of patriotism and of the civic virtues was vital to the survival of the new republic. With an appeal to the fathers of the patria, Linati called for the ‘clases infimas’ to be liberalized and republicanized (liberalizadas, republicanizadas) so that they would become the strongest bulwark against the enemies of the republic.⁴⁹ Since Linati considered public education to be the cornerstone of society, he believed it to be the government’s primary duty to ensure through education the participation of the corrupt Mexican youth in the political and economic processes of an independent Mexico. Here the model Linati had in mind was that of the Napoleonic period: he took the example of the Lycée for its capacity to form the patriotic spirit of the youth, to teach them ‘civic sentiment’, and to use military education, which eventually ‘would defeat the despicable inclination towards stealing’, to instil a sense of honour in them. He harped upon the theme of education in articles published later on in Belgium, in which he raised once more the question as to why the youth did not engage ‘in the new political arena now opened up to them’, and regarded it as the key to resolving the problems of the new Latin American republics.⁵⁰ Santangelo also judged that the Mexican population had retained ‘the radical vices of their former servile condition’, and thus was in need of a ‘revolution in spirit’, by which it might learn to be free and to acquire a ‘public morality’. This, in turn, was possible only through ⁴⁶ Ibid., p. 3. ⁴⁷ Beltrami, Le Mexique, i, pp. 89–90. ⁴⁸ Ibid., p.90. ⁴⁹ ‘Instituciones Publicas’, El Iris, 2 (1826), 175. ⁵⁰ C. Linati, ‘Etat de l’Instruction en Amérique’, L’Industriel. Revue des Revues [1829], quoted in ‘Claudio Linati (1790–1832)’, Memorie parmensi per la storia del Risorgimento, 4 (1935), 24–28, at 25.


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an appropriate education, for which in 1833 he recommended ‘the immediate establishment of primary schools, in each commune of the Union, and of colleges, universities, printing presses, public libraries, etc, in the main towns’. He also advocated the establishment of National Guards in each commune and the disarming of all individuals not belonging to them or to the national army.⁵¹ The federalism of the exiles was thus neither anti-revolutionary nor anti-Napoleonic, but rather built on these historical experiences, and aimed at strengthening the nation. For this reason, it does not fit into the definition of moderate federalism Italian historiography has described as prevailing in the Risorgimento. Undoubtedly, the Italian exiles’ republican and federal stance, as well as their anticlerical animus was by and large socially conservative, and implied nothing more than their support for the abolition of all privileges, equality before the law and a universal but indirect electoral system. While some Mexican radicals like Zavala, who as governor of the state of Mexico expropriated and redistributed Church property, supported programmes of land redistribution, there is virtually no mention of this issue in the writings of the exiles, and certainly land reform was never at the core of their programme of nationalizing the masses and attracting them to the democratic cause.⁵² Admittedly, Beltrami believed, like Pecchio, that by selling the estates of the Church a new class of small landowners could be created, which would both benefit the economy and bring greater political stability to the country.⁵³ Santangelo, however, simply called for a tax on uncultivated land, so as to encourage absentee landlords to exploit it or sell it (a proposal supported by Zavala), and advocated the colonization of land by immigrants, following the North American example.⁵⁴ No reference was made to land reform in El Iris. Given the limited availability of capital in Mexico, Fiorenzo Galli suggested a mixed public–private initiative for the establishment of a ‘Compañia nacional de economía rural’, with shares owned in equal parts by a limited number of private investors and by the states of the federal republic, which would encourage the technical and commercial development of agriculture and contribute to the federal finances. However, he did not see widespread share-ownership as vital to his plan.⁵⁵ Though convinced of the need to nationalize the masses, the Italian exiles were mindful of the potentially threatening role they might play in politics, a threat that was realized in the late 1820s, when popular tumults, uprisings and riots became a dominant feature of Mexican political life. The people thus became an entity to control and to fear as much as to educate, and one which, as the exiles kept repeating in their articles, was still displaying in their immoral ⁵¹ ⁵² ⁵⁴ ⁵⁵

‘Elections Mexicaines’, L’Abeille, 20 February 1833, p. 3. Fowler, Mexico in the Age of Proposals, pp. 181–3. ⁵³ Beltrami, Le Mexique, i, p. 97. ‘Elections Mexicaines’, L’Abeille, 20 February 1833, p. 3. F. Galli, Opúscolo sobre la Economía Rural Mexicana (Mexico, 1826), pp. 11–19.

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and disorderly behaviour the effects of Spanish despotism. Responding to the demise of the federal republic, in 1835, when a centralist-dominated Congress had forced Santa Anna to jettison federalism, Santangelo warned that the indios, manipulated by the clergy, should not have been granted electoral rights from the outset.⁵⁶ Rather than federalism, the exiles believed that it was the weakness of the executive that undermined the ability of the republic to defend itself in case of external danger.⁵⁷ It was to the very limited powers vested to the executive by the constitution that Santangelo ascribed the instability of the republic, as the Congress could stop any decisions from being reviewed or challenged by the President. Recognizing that without representation a government could not be considered to be truly popular and representative, Santangelo nonetheless believed that the President needed more authority to push through his reform agenda.⁵⁸ Support for a strong executive, however, did not come without serious discussions about its compatibility with democracy and with liberalism, a question, as I have noted before, debated on both sides of the Atlantic. The exiles’ discussions on the limits of executive power were conflated with considerations regarding the nature and the qualities of military leadership and democratic heroism, another topic that aroused the interest of liberal audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. As Sudhir Hazareesingh has observed, in Restoration Europe the liberal and republican movements in France had revived the heroic memory of Napoleon to mobilize support for their causes.⁵⁹ At the same time, however, Napoleon’s model of heroism was deeply unsatisfactory, because the authoritarian nature of his rule had not been forgotten. The most powerful case not only for a stronger executive but even for temporary dictatorship in revolutionary times was first made in Mexico by Linati in 1826. While referring to the specific conditions prevailing in Mexico, his remarks, published in El Iris, were intended to serve as a general assessment of the institution of dictatorship in the aftermath of a revolution and during the period of consolidation of freedom in a new country. In Linati’s view, the political dilemma confronting republicans under the threat of counter-revolution was whether to uphold liberal principles and citizens’ rights, thus risking a military coup, or to act with the utmost vigour to defend ‘the new-born tree from the political tempest’, thus depriving the nation of the much-desired fruit of freedom.⁶⁰ In order to resolve this conundrum, Linati thought it necessary to assess whether the state had enemies, whether they were conspiring against it ⁵⁶ O. Santangelo, ‘Situation politique du Mexique’, L’Abeille, 24 October, 1835, p. 3. ⁵⁷ On the powers of the executive in the 1824 constitution see Rodriguez, ‘The Constitution of 1824’, p. 89. ⁵⁸ ‘Elections Mexicaines’, L’Abeille, 19 February 1833. ⁵⁹ S. Hazareesingh, ‘Memory, Legend and Politics: Napoleonic Patriotism in the Restoration Era’, European Journal of Political Theory, 5 (2006), 71–84. ⁶⁰ ‘Politica’, El Iris, 2 (1826), 49–50.


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and whether extraordinary measures were needed to protect it.⁶¹ But in the end his advocacy of the institution of dictatorship stemmed from his firm conviction that exceptional circumstances demanded exceptional institutional solutions: The fact that a liberal periodical advocates the restriction of constitutional freedom should not come across as odd. The very fear of seeing it in danger makes us want the government to be granted strong means to deal with the enemies’ machinations.⁶²

Linati’s model of dictatorship was the ancient Roman one, that of the military leaders who, after fighting for their country, relinquished their power and returned to the frugality of private life. He gave a clear indication that the authoritarian model embodied by Napoleon, in the form it had taken, could not be replicated in history. Admittedly, he identified some aspects of Napoleon’s rule with the very idea of liberalism, implicitly acknowledging the progressive aspects of Napoleon’s revolutionary Caesarism. Indeed, in an imaginary dialogue between Czar Alexander and Napoleon written by Linati for El Iris, the former French Emperor was given the role of supporter of liberal principles against those of the Holy Alliance, represented by Alexander.⁶³ However, Linati’s model dictator was neither Caesar nor the more recent Napoleon, but rather Washington or Bolívar.⁶⁴ Torcuato di Tella has recently argued that these articles may indicate that the radicals had intended to gain power by introducing a stronger executive.⁶⁵ Whether this was the case or not, Linati’s articles initiated a debate on the topic in the Mexican press, with the conservative El Sol violently attacking El Iris, arguing that his proposal opened the door to a power more despotic than that of absolute monarchies, and with El Aguila defending Linati’s proposals in the case of external attack.⁶⁶ Linati replied to his critics in a final article which specifically referred to the Mexican context. Although he conceded that the excessive concentration of powers in one pair of hands might prove dangerous, he also added that the nation’s representatives could always dismiss a dictator if the need arose. Moreover, he was convinced of the republican credentials of the ⁶¹ ‘¿Los enemigos del Estado cospiran?’, El Iris, 2 (1826), 68–69 ⁶² ‘¿Estando el peligro procsimo, se necesitan medidas vigorosas que esten fuera del alcance de las autoridades ordinarias?’, El Iris, 2 (1826), 89. Other exiles shared Linati’s belief that during a revolution fundamental freedoms could be temporarily curtailed. For instance, during the defence of Barcelona against the French invasion, Galli argued in favour of limiting freedom of expression as an exceptional measure during a civil war. See F. Galli, Mémoires sur la dernière guerre de Catalogne (Paris, 1828), pp. 351–71. ⁶³ ‘Diálogos de los muertos’, El Iris, 1 (1826), 64–68. ⁶⁴ El Iris, 2 (1826), 90. In fact Linati celebrated the general and president of Mexico Vittoria as a new ‘Washington’ for his respect of representative institutions in his collection of engravings published in Europe. See Linati, Costumes Civils, Militaires et Religieux du Mexique (Brussels, 1828), plate 13. ⁶⁵ Di Tella, National Popular Politics in Early Independent Mexico, p.165. ⁶⁶ See El Sol, 9 June 1826, n. 1104, p. 1494; El Aguila, 4, June 1826, pp. 2–3.

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Mexican army, which, he argued, would never support a dictator against the will of the nation.⁶⁷ The adoption of dictatorship by Linati, and by the other Italian revolutionaries who would define themselves as ‘liberals’, demonstrates that such an institution, popularized after the French Revolution through Rousseau’s writings, came to be seen as an acceptable solution also in the case of a ‘liberal’ revolution.⁶⁸ This form of temporary dictatorship, which was designed to obtain a victory against the enemy and to achieve national liberation without, however, leading to Buonarroti’s creation of a radically new society, represented the prevailing model endorsed by Risorgimento patriots.⁶⁹ The debate about Bolívar and other American caudillos confirms that for most Italian patriots there was a fine but insurmountable line between a general defending the nation against external threats and a permanent dictator doing away with political freedom. This distinction between holding exceptional powers during a revolution and keeping them at the expense of democracy in peace likewise informed the exiles’ discussion regarding the qualities of Romantic heroism. As I have remarked above, after 1815 the Italian patriots were in search of models of military heroic virtue distinct from those of Napoleon. The popularity of Carlo Botta’s bestselling Storia della guerra dell’indipendenza degli Stati Uniti d’America in the Restoration demonstrates the appeal that his celebration of George Washington’s republicanism, as opposed to Napoleon’s despotism, had among Italian and European liberals.⁷⁰ Also, revolutionary Spain had made an important contribution to the creation of new models of heroism with the example of Rafael Riego, the initiator of the revolution and one of its leading political and military figures.⁷¹ Riego was a leader whose liberal insurrection had been carried out in the name of the Constitution, and as a member of the Cortes and then as its president, Riego protected the representative institutions, fought for them, and paid with his life for his commitment, as the king had him executed in 1823 as a traitor. Pecchio described Riego as a figure who combined the courage of the ancient, classical hero with the Romantic attributes of emotionality and passion, but noted, significantly enough, that he was by no means as ambitious as Napoleon had been.⁷² Santangelo devoted a five-act ⁶⁷ El Iris, 2 (1826), p. 222. ⁶⁸ M. Thom, Republics, Nations and Tribes; (London and New York, 1995), pp. 150–2. On Buonarroti’s idea of dictatorship and the debate around this institution in France see now C. Vetter, Il dispotismo della libertà: Dittatura e rivoluzione dall’Illuminismo al 1848 (Milan, 1993), pp. 87–90. ⁶⁹ C. Vetter, Dittatura e Rivoluzione nel Risorgimento Italiano ( Trieste, 2003), p. 9. ⁷⁰ C. Botta, Storia della guerra dell’indipendenza degli Stati Uniti d’America (Paris, 1809). ⁷¹ S. Candido, ‘La revolución de Cádiz y el General Rafael del Riego. Su lucha por la libertad. Mito e imagen por medio de los despachos diplomáticos de Madrid, Turín y el periódico Gazzetta di Genova (1820–1823)’, in A. Gil Novales (ed.), Ejército, pueblo y Constitución. Homenaje al General Rafael del Riego (Madrid, 1987), pp. 80–95. ⁷² G. Pecchio, Sei Mesi in Ispagna, in SP, p. 46. In 1823 Angeloni published a sonnet in the Morning Chronicle in which Riego was described as a saint now in Paradise, enjoying God’s light in


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tragedy to the life of Riego: published in New York in 1828, it sold 2,000 copies in a mere three months.⁷³ The plot of Santangelo’s tragedy hinges upon the intrigues surrounding Riego, in prison and awaiting execution, and upon the contrast between the devious conduct of the king, the ultimate Alfierian despot, a cruel and capricious ruler hungry for revenge, and the virtues of the Spanish general. Bolívar was also praised at first for his heroic virtues. Celebrated as a republican hero, compared to George Washington and Napoleon for his military prowess, the Libertador exemplified among Italian patriots the virtuous general leading a people in its struggle for freedom. In 1824, just after Bolívar’s final victory at Ayacucho, the Italian exile, poet and improviser Filippo Pistrucci published a poem in his honour.⁷⁴ Although Bolívar remained a much admired revolutionary leader and a model of Romantic heroism until the end of his life, later developments in his career provoked serious criticism among the liberal exiles. When he returned to Venezuela and, in the face of growing factionalism and unrest, assumed full dictatorial powers, Pecchio, who was interested in writing his biography, expressed the bewilderment of liberal public opinion: ‘Here we do not know whether he is a hero or a tyrant disguised as a hero, like Napoleon’.⁷⁵ Linati, when writing on South American politics back in Europe in 1829, attacked Bolívar for his despotic inclinations, and confirmed his belief that ‘George Washington was the only model who could ensure glory to his imitators’.⁷⁶ Luigi Angeloni alone stood by Bolívar’s political choices, but otherwise all the Italian exiles sided with Constant in his dispute with de Pradt over the compatibility between the Libertador’s dictatorial powers and freedom.⁷⁷ The Italian exiles were thus perplexed by Latin American caudillismo and disappointed by the scanty democratic credentials of the American military leaders. Although in 1832 Santangelo had described General Santa Anna as a hero because of his defence of the nation’s will in the civil war against the company of other heroes. See his Alla valente ed animosa gioventù d’Italia: Esortazioni Patrie così di prosa come di verso (London, 1837), at pp. 109–13. ⁷³ As we learn from Attellis’s manuscript, I miei casi di Roma, Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, MS V A 47(3), p. 25. I have consulted the 1848 edition of his Riego published in Genoa. ⁷⁴ On Bolívar see D. Brading The First America, pp. 604–20; A. Pagden, Spanish Imperialism and the Political Imagination (New Haven and London, 1990), pp. 133–53. Pistrucci’s poem ‘Inno a Bolívar’ is in The American Monitor, 2 (1825), 147–9. It has been republished in Filippi (ed.), Bolívar y Europa, vol. 1, pp. 578–80. ⁷⁵ Pecchio to Valle, 22 Sept. 1827, in Cartas, p.151. ⁷⁶ Revue Trimestrielle Historique, 1 (1829), 220–2, quoted in ‘Claudio Linati’, pp. 34–7. Support to the democratic model of herosim represented by Washington was already expressed during the Spanish revolution. See, for instance, L. Monteggia, ‘Noticia de la obra intitulada: Historia de la Guerra de la indipendencia de los Estados Unidos de América escrita en italiano por Carlo Botta’, El Europeo, 2 vols (1823), i, 28–33. See also F. Galli, All’inclito Mina prode, invitto, immortale de’ tiranni e de’ schiavi fulmina un proscritto d’Italia questi carmi (n.p., 1823). ⁷⁷ A. Filippi, ‘Simón Bolívar e la nascita delle nuove repubbliche ispanoamericane nel pensiero politico italiano dell’ottocento’, Il Pensiero Politico, 18 (1985), 182–202, 188–94; and Angeloni, Alla Valente ed animosa gioventù, pp. 617–18.

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Anastasio Bustamante, he also remarked that patriotic heroism could hardly apply to a civil war: These ideas of indomitable courage and of military glory, which serve to define the hero in the wars between nations foreign to one another, cannot have either the same weight or the same prestige in domestic quarrels, where victory and defeat are both a misfortune, since both caused the blood of members of the same political family to flow.⁷⁸

Furthermore, the populist manipulation of the rural masses by the military leaders of America fighting in civil wars showed that they would not always simply reflect and satisfy the expectations of the whole nation, but, in order to promote their own personal interests, tended rather to divide it up into warring factions. This conduct, and the example of caudillos mobilizing factional ambitions represented the negation of the patriotic heroism embodied by the early Bolívar or Riego.⁷⁹ Finally, like Napoleon and Bolívar, Santa Anna ended up betraying the republican cause. Faced with the General’s resigned acceptance of the need to dismantle the federal structure of the Mexican state and to introduce by means of a constituent congress a centralised government system and a limited franchise, Santangelo condemned him for doing what Napoleon had done with the French Republic, and dismissed his constitutional project as a ‘parody of the organization of the empire’.⁸⁰ The high expectations entertained by the liberals when considering the New World were undermined by the activities of the libertadores and by the political instability of Latin America, producing the same tension between utopia and reality as in the Spanish revolution of 1820–23. In the same way as the memory of the Spanish masses fighting for freedom prevailed over that of their hostility to the revolution, in the following years the Spanish American movement for independence led by the libertadores was remembered in a positive light and mythologized by Italian patriots as the incarnation of heroism.⁸¹ However, what is striking about the contemporary comments by the exiles is precisely their determination to support any models of revolutionary and military leadership that were compatible with democracy and with parliamentary freedoms.

C O N C LU S I O N S As Lucy Riall has convincingly demonstrated, the Risorgimento idea of nation was inextricably linked with the celebration of military heroes, who identified ⁷⁸ ‘Considérations’, L’Abeille, 23 January, 3. ⁷⁹ ‘Situation politique du Mexique’, L’Abeille, 24 October 1835, 3. ⁸⁰ Ibid. On the end of the federal republic see Anna, Forging Mexico, pp. 258–8. ⁸¹ G. Ricciardi, Conforti all’Italia, ovvero preparamenti all’insurrezione (Paris, 1846), pp. 51–2; N., Tommaseo, Dell’Italia [1835], 2 vols ( Turin, 1920), ii, p. 180; G. Mazzini to his mother, 29 April 1837, SEI, xii, pp. 393–96; Vetter, Dittatura e Rivoluzione, p. 123.


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themselves with the democratic aspirations and wishes of the people. The Risorgimento military hero embodied the qualities of the volunteer fighting to defend the republican ideals of the French Revolution. In the Risorgimento the integration of the experience of war, military virtues, and heroism into the patriotic discourse, typical of all European nationalism, did not result from the authoritarian intervention of the state, but was rather the outcome of the patriots’ determination to build a nation which did not yet exist, and thus remained democratic and revolutionary in content. Since the 1840s, Giuseppe Garibaldi came to incarnate all the qualities of such a model, and represented the culmination of a Risorgimento democratic tradition.⁸² In the 1820s and 1830s, however, Spain and Spanish America were already furnishing patriots with ample material for the elaboration of such ideas of military heroism. In the absence of any Italian models, and with no immediate hopes for a revolution in the peninsula, George Washington, Rafael Riego, Simón Bolívar, Vicente Guerrero, Guadalupe Victoria, and Antonio López de Santa Anna could well incarnate the ideals and expectations of the Italian patriots, while their heroic deeds provided examples which could be appropriated by them for their own ideological purposes. The exiles’ distinction between heroism and despotism formulated in the course of their debate on temporary dictatorship in Latin America, demonstrate the anti-authoritarian nature, and republican provenance, of the military heroism they were delineating as early as the 1820s. The exiles’ support for Latin American radical liberalism has wider implications for our understanding of the Risorgimento debate between federalists and supporters of a more centralized and unitary national model. As I have sought to demonstrate, the most important aspect of the exiles’ support for federalism was its identification with liberalism and individual rights against despotism, centralism, oligarchy, and privilege. Admittedly, in many cases federal plans were indeed the favoured option of the moderate liberals after 1815, and were clearly intended to advance the interests of the regional oligarchies. It cannot be denied that exiles like Carlo Botta, who admired American federalism, devised federal plans for Italy which were unabashedly designed to confer a leading role upon the oligarchic aristocracies of the Italian cities.⁸³ Yet political emigration after 1815 offers a more complex picture. While the Italian exiles in Paris in 1799, as Anna Maria Rao has shown, advocated the creation of a unified, rather than a federal Italian republic, in the 1820s the overwhelming majority of exiled patriots embraced the federalist option.⁸⁴. Even the exiles close to Buonarroti, who was deeply sceptical of federalism, disagreed with the veteran revolutionary leader on this issue.⁸⁵ ⁸² L. Riall, ‘Eroi maschili, virilità e forme di guerra’, in A. M. Banti and P. Ginsborg (eds), Il Risorgimento, in Storia d’Italia, Annali 22 ( Turin, 2007), pp. 253–88. ⁸³ C. Botta, Storia d’Italia dal 1789 al 1814, 4 vols (Italia, 1826), i, pp. 43–50. ⁸⁴ A. M. Rao, Esuli: L’emigrazione politica italiana in Francia (1792–1802) (Naples, 1992). ⁸⁵ A. Galante Garrone, Filippo Buonarroti e i rivoluzionari italiani (1828–1837) [1951] (2nd edn, Turin, 1975). p. 189.

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The exiles’ discussions provide solid evidence for the existence of a truly national and democratic federalist movement among Italian patriots in the early years of the Restoration. It is certainly true that some of the exiles, while admiring the Americas, thought that American federalism was not suited to Italy, because of its history and current political divisions. This was the case with Francesco Salfi, for example, and yet he did nonetheless believe that a federation of independent states would help turn Italy into a nation.⁸⁶ However, the exiles discussed in this chapter demonstrate that exile federalism was stimulated not only by the example of North America much admired by democrats like Guglielmo Pepe and Luigi Angeloni, as Giorgio Spini noted more than thirty years ago, but also by the new Spanish American republics.⁸⁷ This federalism may have been pitted against the excessive centralizing tendencies of the Napoleonic era, yet it was not anti-national; on the contrary, as Giacomo de Meester argued when praising American federalism, it went hand in hand with a commitment to popular sovereignty, the elimination of aristocratic privileges, and the endorsement of the democratic principles of the French Revolution.⁸⁸ As I trust the previous pages demonstrate, a preoccupation with building the patria represented the overriding priority of the exiles when telling their Latin American counterparts how to handle revolutions; hence their emphasis on the need for a strong, albeit temporary revolutionary leadership. Thus the ideas of the exiles undermine the distinction made by Italian historians between the revolutionary federalism of 1796–9 and that of the Risorgimento. Through its tendency to equate the federal cause with individual rights, exile federalism did in fact more nearly resemble the liberal federalism developed in the same years in France by Constant, Carrel, and Lafayette than that allegedly promoted by the Italian regional aristocracies.⁸⁹ Indeed, democratic federalism survived in the Napoleonic era in the programme of the members of secret societies and then re-emerged after the Napoleonic interlude, when during the revolution in Naples in 1821 many ⁸⁶ F. S. Salfi, L’Italia nel secolo diciannovesimo o della necessità di accordare in Italia il potere con la libertà (Cosenza, 1990), pp. 79–82. It was originally published as L’Italie au dix-neuvième siècle; ou de la nécessité d’accorder en Italie le pouvoir avec la liberté (Paris, 1821). Francis Romeo took the German Confederation as a model for Italy. See his Federative Constitution for Italy (London, 1822). ⁸⁷ G. Spini, Italia e America dal Settecento all’età del’imperialismo (Venice, 1976), pp. 15–18. Pepe, Memoria su i mezzi, pp. 10–11. L. Angeloni, Dell’Italia uscente il settembre del 1818. Ragionamenti IV, 2 vols (Paris, 1818), ii, pp. 3–7. ⁸⁸ G. F. de Meester Hüyoel, Della Repubblica democratico-rappresentativa (Milan, 1848), pp. 9–10, 16. His praise of American federalism as a model for Italy here is based on unpublished considerations he had written fifteen years before in his E’ egli possibile un governo repubblicano rappresentativo? Problema risoluto da un vecchio repubblicano, Carte De Meester, c.2b(4)2, in Fondo Esuli, MRM. ⁸⁹ On Constant’s federalism see Meuwly, Liberté et Société; Higonnet, ‘Le fédéralisme américain et le fédéralisme de Benjamin Constant’. On Constant and the exiles see Pepe, Memoirs, iii, p. 291.


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supported the Spanish constitution on account of its quasi-federal nature, hoping that it would accommodate the expectations of the provincial middle classes impatient with the power of the court and the aristocracy.⁹⁰ The existence of this democratic or, in any case, national and federal movement helps us overcome the schematic opposition between the unitary-democratic and national option on one side and the federal-oligarchic, regional and moderate programme on the other, and provides a more nuanced picture of the political attitudes of the national movement in the Restoration period. In the 1820s, given the restless movement of the exiles between the two continents and their political and journalistic activities on both sides of the Atlantic, their belief in the close relationship between freedom and federalism helped to sustain a genuinely transnational debate about the federal cause in which they advocated federalism in Europe through their publications, and supported the self-same cause in the Americas. Returning to Europe, Claudio Linati continued to praise in the European press the federal institutions of the ‘independent, industrial, commercial republics’ of the Americas, deeming them to be the only ones compatible with the spirit of modern civilization.⁹¹ Admittedly by the mid-thirties this federal moment of European liberalism was in decline. The death of Lafayette and Carrel, the critical remarks of Tocqueville on American democracy affected the popularity of federalism among French liberals.⁹² These facts, reinforced by the rise of Mazzini, undermined the commitment of the Italian diaspora to federalism. A critique of federalism, which the founder of the Giovine Italia associated with aristocratic oligarchies and anti-national tendencies, was a key element in his political propaganda. As a consequence, by the 1840s, some exiles had changed their mind and rallied to the idea of a unitary republic in Italy. Among the moderates in exile Pellegrino Rossi, who as Professor of Constitutional Law in Paris was a prominent advocate of the constitutional system consolidated under Louis-Philippe, maintained that Italy could become a nation only through the introduction of a centralized state, according to the model imported into the peninsula by Napoleon. Other exiles, GianBattista Marochetti among them, continued to favour federalism, but they did so in spite of their criticism of the North American political system.⁹³ During and after the 1848 revolutions democratic federalism resurfaced to challenge Mazzini’s programme, but was based on different theoretical premises and engaged with new international debates, and most notably with the ideas of Proudhon. Only ⁹⁰ De Francesco, ‘Unità nella Federazione’, in idem, Rivoluzione e Costituzioni, pp. 11–28. For federalism among the 1821 revolutionaries see J. Davis, Naples and Napoleon: Southern Italy and the European Revolutions 1780–1860 (Oxford, 2006), pp. 298, 303–4. ⁹¹ Linati, ‘Etat de l’Instruction en Amérique’, in ‘Claudio Linati’, p. 27. ⁹² Rémond, Les États Unis, ii, pp. 660–683, and ff. ⁹³ P. Rossi, Cours de droit constitutionnel [1835–37], in Œuvres Complètes, 10 vols (Paris, 1863–67), i, p. 89; G. B. Marochetti, L’Italie, ce qu’elle doit faire pour figurer enfin parmi les nations indépendantes et libres (Paris, 1837), p. 163.

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a minority of those surviving from the 1820 generation, De Meester among them, would continue to base their support for federalism on an appreciation of American freedom acquired almost twenty years before.⁹⁴ However, until the early 1830s the popularity of the federal cause among the Italian exiles was almost uncontested, and represented a key element in their conception of the Risorgimento, and in the fashioning of both their liberalism and their patriotism. ⁹⁴ F. Della Peruta, I democratici e la rivoluzione italiana (Milan, 1974). On De Meester in 1848 see his Della repubblica.

4 Greece and the Regeneration of the Mediterranean I N T RO D U C T I O N Even more than is the case with Spanish America, Greek patriotism developed outside the geographical space of the state it hoped to construct, and was very much the product of a foreign movement, European philhellenism. The intellectual exchanges between Greek and western European intellectuals resulted in a ‘trade-off’ that accounts for the popularity of the Greek cause: the philhellenes claimed Greece as a crucial element of Europe’s identity, indeed, as the cradle of its civilization, and in return the Greek revolutionary leadership received from Europe the legitimation of their cause.¹ Given the universality of the principles of civilization and freedom it espoused, philhellenism was a movement that advanced cosmopolitan ideals as well as Greek patriotism.² Michel Espagne and Gilles Pécout remind us that philhellenism was the outcome of a collective European endeavour to produce shared ideas and tropes or ‘common denominators’ about Greek history and identity. As a pan-European movement, it was conceived by a cosmopolitan intellectual community and transnational intellectual networks including Greek, Italian, British, and German writers. The rise of philhellenism thus required intellectual mediators, conversant with different languages and cultures. A typical example was Claude Fauriel, whose collection of traditional Greek songs, Chants Populaires —arguably the most influential piece of philhellenic literature—was the result of numerous cultural influences, ranging from Alessandro Manzoni and the Italian Romantics to German philology and to intellectuals of the Greek diaspora like Andrea Mustoxidi. Through modern folklore Fauriel wanted to show the European public that a contemporary and distinctly Greek culture existed in spite of Turkish oppression, and that, rather than being the wily, unreliable tradesmen described by contemporary ¹ M. Espagne and G. Pécout, ‘Introduction’, in idem (eds), ‘Philhellénismes et transferts culturels dans L’Europe du XIXe siècle’, Revue Germanique Internationale, 1–2 (2005), 5–7, at 6. ² G. W. Most, ‘Jusqu’à quel point le philhellénisme e´tait-il une expression du nationalisme?’, in P. D’Iorio and G. Merlio (eds), Nietzsche et l’Europe (Paris, 2006), pp. 57–73.

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French travellers, the Greeks had a noble and heroic character like their ancient predecessors.³ The topoi around which the philhellenic discourse was built included not merely a set of key concepts, but also places and heroic figures. A typical example is the figure of Lord Byron, whose death in Greece on 19 April 1824 turned him into an internationally recognized symbol of Greek patriotism. The already famous poet became the focus of a number of literary and poetic representations, while Missolonghi, where he breathed his last, was transformed into a mythical place for philhellenism. At the same time, however, this exchange of ideas not only gave rise to homogeneous elements and shared tropes, but also produced different brands of philhellenism, with quite distinctive ideological and cultural features. Indeed, philhellenism could be ideologically divisive.⁴ English philhellenes might well be motivated primarily by an urge to extend the principles of English civilization, while Ancient Greek archaeology and philology motivated their German counterparts.⁵ While the former Spanish and Portuguese colonies were emancipating themselves, the struggle for the independence of Greece was still in progress. Following the uprising of the Peloponnese in March 1821, for several years the Greek patriots carried on a war against Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt. In spite of the adoption of a first constitution in 1822, revised the following year to create a single state, the Greek movement for emancipation was divided internally by factions engaged in a civil war. It was only in October 1827, when at Navarino the British, Russian, and French fleets defeated the navy of Ibrahim Pasha, that the right to independence became an uncontroversial issue, to be settled in negotiation with the Ottoman Empire. Between 1824 and 1825 a considerable number of foreign volunteers, including a few Italians, left western Europe for Greece. The European philhellenes belonged to transnational networks of supporters who set up committees in Paris, London, Geneva, and Munich, and tried to cooperate to provide financial and military aid to the Greek cause. Thousands of volunteers flocked to Greece during the revolution.⁶ Among them, a small group of exiles, the ‘Counts Carbonari’, became involved in the Greek revolution through the English networks, and in particular through the London Greek Committee, ³ On Fauriel see M. Espagne, ‘Le philhellénisme entre philologie et politique. Un transfert franco-allemand’, in idem and Pécout (eds), ‘Philhellénismes’, pp. 61–75; I. Miodrag, Claude Fauriel et la fortune européenne des poésies populaires grecque et serbe (Paris, 1966); C. Rearick, ‘Local Colour in Post-Enlightenment Culture’, Balkan Studies, 40 (1999), 91–116. ⁴ Espagne and Pécout (eds), ‘Philhellénismes’, pp. 6–7. ⁵ S. Marchand, Down from Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750–1970 (Princeton, 1996). ⁶ D. Dakin, The Greek Struggle for Independence 1821–1833 (London, 1973). The best account of the philhellenic movement and the role of the philhellenes in the Greek war is W. St. Clair, That Greece Might Still be Free: The Philhellenes in the War of Independence (London, 1972). On the Italians in Greece, see ibid, pp. 251–62. See also C. Francovich, ‘Il movimento filoellenico in Italia e in Europa’, in idem, Indipendenza e Unità Nazionale in Italia ed in Grecia (Florence, 1987), pp. 1–23.

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supported by Whig and Radical political circles. Count Alerino Palma went to Greece in September 1824, and remained there until June the following year.⁷ He not only volunteered to convey to the Greek government the third instalment (50,000 pounds in gold) of the first loan raised in England by the London Greek Committee, but he also had a hand in setting up the country’s institutions and legal structures, and penned the most detailed and accurate account of Europe’s involvement in the Greek revolution.⁸ Giuseppe Pecchio, accompanied by Count Gamba (who had already spent time there with Byron), went to Greece in April 1825 to deliver an instalment of the second loan.⁹ Palma, Pecchio, Gamba and Luigi Porro Lambertenghi wanted to contribute to the establishment of a ‘Private Council of State for the Executive’, in which they would be put in charge of justice, military, and financial affairs in collaboration with the Greek government.¹⁰ Other exiles, such as Ugo Foscolo, Alfio Grassi, and Francesco Salfi, did not participate directly in the war or in the efforts to raise money, but wrote or spoke in defence of the Greeks. The contribution of the Italian exiles to European philhellenism cannot be understood if we lose sight of the unique links that existed between Italian and Greek patriotism. First, Greek patriotism owed much to, and was intimately connected with the earliest formulations of Italian patriotism. The French revolutionary language of republicanism and nationhood had reached Greece and had been adopted by the first Greek patriots under the direct influence of their Italian brethren during the revolutionary and Napoleonic periods. In Greece this language was developed in the context of the collapse of Venetian rule between 1797 and 1799 and the subsequent short-lived French occupation and establishment in 1800 of the Ionian islands’ Septinsular Republic. Given the role played by early Italian patriots in shaping the political and cultural nature of Greek patriotism, Italian and Greek national discourses inevitably displayed striking similarities. Greek and Italian patriots believed that their two nations or peoples could regain their former glory and catch up with the more advanced European nations once they had been recognized as independent countries. Their national characters needed to be revitalized through the establishment of free institutions.¹¹ ⁷ A. Palma, Greece Vindicated; in two letters by Count Alerino Palma; To which are added by the same author, critical remarks on the works recently published on the same subject by Messrs. Bulwer, Emerson, Pecchio, Humphreys, Stanhope, Parry, & Blaquiere (London, 1826), pp. 2, 62. ⁸ St. Clair, That Greece Might Still be Free, p. 215, Palma, Greece Vindicated, p. 3. On the first Greek Loan see also F. Rosen, Bentham, Byron and Greece: Constitutionalism, Nationalism, and the Early Liberal Political Thought (Oxford, 1992), pp. 103–22. ⁹ C. Ugoni, Vita e scritti di Giuseppe Pecchio (Paris, 1836), p. 32–3. ¹⁰ A. Morandi, Il mio giornale dal 1848 al 1850 (Modena, 1867), p. 76. ¹¹ For early national language in Greece the most important document is A. Korais, ‘Mémoire sur l’état actuel de la civilisation dans la Grèce’ [1803], in E. Kedourie, Nationalism in Asia and Africa (New York and Cleveland, 1970), pp. 153–88. The relationship between Greek and Italian national discourse is discussed in P. Kitromilides, ‘Republican Aspirations in South-Eastern Europe in the Age

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Secondly, Greek patriotism, like the early formulation of the Risorgimento, owed much to the experience of exile, since the leading figures of Greek patriotism, Adamantios Korais, Andrea Mustoxidi, Andrea Kalvos, and many others in the Greek diaspora, were deeply influenced by northern European or Italian political and literary cultures. Finally, Greek patriotism was intimately connected to Italian patriotism because some of the key figures of the Greek diaspora had a double Italo-Greek cultural identity. The Ionian Mustoxidi and the anonymous author of the Hellenic Nomarchy could be seen as by-products of the contemporary Italian Romantic and classical cultural environment. Thus, the former was a personal friend of Foscolo and Pecchio, and therefore a wellknown figure in Lombard and Piedmontese Romantic intellectual circles, while the latter was not only heavily indebted to the anti-tyrannical and republican ideas of Vittorio Alfieri and to the tradition of the Tuscan Enlightenment, but had also drawn inspiration from Foscolo’s Ultime Lettere di Jacopo Ortis.¹² Indeed, Foscolo belonged to both the Greek and the Italian diasporas. Thus, well before the participation of Italian volunteers in the Greek war of liberation, the continuous exchanges between Italian and Greek patriots in Italy and beyond had ensured the existence of a common ideological platform, and of intellectual affinities giving rise to markedly similar patriotic discourses. As producers of philhellenic discourse in Europe, the Italian exiles and volunteers also played an important role in the consolidation of certain shared European opinions about Greece. One of their number, the Piedmontese Santorre di Santarosa, to whom I shall return, became a pan-European philhellenic icon second in importance only to Byron. At the same time, the exiles’ philhellenism displayed certain peculiarities that served to differentiate it from any other European variant. Scrutiny of the Italian philhellenes’ views reveals that the freedom of the Mediterranean as a whole was of paramount importance to them, since they held the destinies of Greece, Italy, and the Mediterranean islands to be interdependent. The belief in this intimate connection can shed some light upon this generation’s conception of the Risorgimento, and upon the nature of their patriotism in general. The Italian exiles’ Mediterranean phrasing of the problem of emancipation and freedom, however, was not unproblematic. Moreover, it also had a significant bearing on a number of European intellectual debates taking place at the time of the Greek war of independence. First, it raised the problem of locating the of the French Revolution’, in idem, Enlightenment, Nationalism, Orthodoxy: Studies in the Culture and Political Thought of South-Eastern Europe (Aldershot, 1994), pp. 275–85. ¹² P. Kitromilides, ‘From Republican Patriotism to National Sentiment. A Reading of Hellenic Nomarchy,’ European Journal of political Theory, 5 (2006), 50–60; on Mustoxidi see K. Zanou, ‘Andrea Mustoxidi: nostalgie, poésie populaire et philhellénisme’, in Espagne and Pécout (eds), ‘Philhellénismes’, pp. 143–54.


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Mediterranean in the geography of civilization. It is precisely in this period that the idea of a ‘Mediterranean region’ was first conceived by French travellers and geographers.¹³ European public opinion viewed Greece as the very symbol of Europe, and transformed philhellenism into the fight for civilization and Christianity against Ottoman barbarity and despotism. Yet at the same time northern European travellers and intellectuals were busy constructing southeastern Europe as the polar opposite of northern European values of progress and industriousness, a region at the margins, if not outside Europe.¹⁴ These conflicting interpretations thus made the location of the Mediterranean in the geography of civilization a particularly controversial issue, not least because it had implications for the capacity or otherwise of Mediterranean populations to enjoy freedom. As a consequence, the Italian exiles’ political agenda clashed with that of other groups of philhellenes, and in particular with those of the English philhellenes on the London Greek Committee, whose activities caused much controversy. In the opinion of Frederick Rosen, who has studied the different views of the Radicals involved both in the setting up of the London Greek Committee and in the management of the loans raised to finance the revolution, in this controversy, several problems crucial to the development of liberalism as an ideology emerged in a striking manner. The most important was the problem of the extension of liberalism to the context of a non-European state where nationalist aspirations had to be weighed against liberal values.¹⁵

The tensions over Greece highlighted by Rosen were in turn part of a broader debate in which authoritarian or ‘imperial’ liberalism was at odds with liberal nationalism. The exiles’ views about the future of the Mediterranean thus provide an interesting example of how the rising European imperial ideology might conflict with or, conversely, be accommodated by aspirations to self-government on the periphery of Europe. These conflicting interpretations of the position of the Mediterranean in the geography of civilization first emerged over the cession of the isle of Parga to the Ottoman authorities in 1819, when English reactions to Foscolo’s writings foreshadowed the differences of opinion among Italian and English philhellenes in the later debate about Greek independence. It is, therefore, with Foscolo’s role as producer of philhellenic ideas that I shall start my investigation of the exiles’ philhellenism. ¹³ P. Horden and N. Purcell, ‘The Mediterranean and ‘‘The new Thalassology’’ ’, American Historical Review, 111 (2006), 1441–64. ¹⁴ On these issues see N. Moe, The View from Vesuvius: Italian Culture and the Southern Question (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 2002); K. E. Fleming, The Muslim Bonaparte: Diplomacy and Orientalism in Ali Pacha’s Greece (Princeton-New Jersey, 1999). ¹⁵ Rosen, Bentham, Byron and Greece, pp. 177–8.

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U G O F O S C O LO , T H E I O N I A N I S L A N D S , A N D PA RG A’ S CESSION For both biographical and ideological reasons, Ugo Foscolo was particularly well suited to the task of endorsing the national and democratic ideals of both Italian and Greek patriots and acting as a bridge between two national identities under the influence of revolutionary events. Born a Venetian citizen on the Ionian isle of Zante, he had been a Jacobin who at first welcomed Bonaparte as epitomizing the principles of the French Revolution, but had been disappointed at what he considered to be the General’s betrayal of the Italian cause, when in 1797 he handed Venice over to the Austrians by the Treaty of Campoformio. In 1812, Foscolo confessed to his friend Isabella Teodochi Albrizzi to being ‘Italo-Greek’, a description implying his double cultural identity and thus an allegiance to both patrie.¹⁶ His articles in the revolutionary newspaper Monitore Italiano published in 1798 reveal his sympathy for the Ionian republican movement and his enthusiasm for their efforts to revitalize ‘Ancient Greek democracy’ and fight against the corruption brought about by centuries of decadence.¹⁷ It was with reference to the destiny of the Ionian Islands and their mainland dependencies, under a British protectorate since 1814, that Foscolo’s interest in the problem of freedom and independence in Greece re-emerged during his exile.¹⁸ Foscolo voiced his views on the political conditions of the Ionian Islands under British rule in a document written in 1817 (though never published during his life-time), entitled Stato politico delle isole Jonie (Political state of the Ionian Islands), at a time when parliament was debating the constitution to be granted to them by the British government. Foscolo had no illusions about the degree of freedom that the British government was willing to grant to the Islands since, like the other European powers after 1815, it was determined to limit peoples’ aspirations to freedom. However, while not denying the Ionian Islands’ right to aspire to independence, he believed that their citizens were not ready for it, as centuries of Venetian rule had corrupted their character, created divisions, dissension, and enhanced the diversity of their customs. It was Foscolo’s firm belief that unity among citizens should be reached through the gradual adoption of common values and beliefs as a precondition to independence, and that public education would play a vital role in this process.¹⁹ Foscolo believed that the protectorate ¹⁶ On Foscolo’s identity see M. A. Terzoli, Foscolo (Bari, 2000), pp. 172–3. ¹⁷ Foscolo, ‘Il Monitore Italiano’, (22 Jan. 1798), in EN, 6, pp. 48–9. ¹⁸ I follow Eugenio Federico Biagini, who provides an in-depth analysis of Foscolo’s Stato Politico in ‘Liberty, Class and Nation-Building; Ugo Foscolo’s ‘‘English’’ Constitutional Thought, 1816–1827’, European Journal of Political Theory, 5 (2006), 34–49. ¹⁹ Foscolo, Stato Politico delle Isole Jonie, in EN, 13, I, pp. 8–9, 11–13.


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required a federal constitution, in order to reflect the relative autonomy of each island, a political system based on a single parliamentary assembly and political rights exclusively granted to landowners.²⁰ Unfortunately, he was soon to be bitterly disappointed: in 1820 he recognized that the constitution granted to the Ionian Islands was little more than a formal recognition of Lord Maitland’s despotic power, as ‘the Lord High Commissioner is virtually responsible to nobody’.²¹ What Foscolo was never willing to question was the Greek Islands’ right to maintain their European and Christian identity. In 1819, the handing over by the British government of the Christian village of Parga to the Ottoman bey outraged European public opinion and represented a turning point in the creation of a European enthusiasm for the Greek cause. Foscolo, grievously disappointed, vented his frustration and anger in the Edinburgh Review.²² His account of the history of Parga and of its cession transformed the events into a powerful tool of philhellenic propaganda, and shows for the first time the differences in outlook between English and Italian attitudes towards the degree of civilization, and readiness for freedom, of the Mediterranean populations. Unlike some of their French and English equivalents, Foscolo, Giovanni Berchet and Mustoxidi’s manipulation of these events had a clear political agenda which transcended the fate of one small village and was instrumental in advancing the causes of Greek and Italian nationality alike. Located on the coast opposite the Ionian Islands, with which it had longstanding political, economic, and cultural links, Parga had been occupied by British troops since 1814, when they had replaced the French garrison protecting the village. According to the terms of a treaty signed in 1800, while the Ionian Islands were granted independence under a joint Russian-Turkish protectorate, their mainland dependencies, including Parga, would come under the direct rule of the Porte. In 1819, however, in compliance with the treaty signed in 1800, the British government handed Parga over to Ali Pasha of Ioannina and Constantinople’s formal regional representative. The Christian inhabitants of Parga, who at one time or another had begged in vain for their city to be annexed to the Ionian Islands, decided to abandon their village rather than live under the Ottoman regime.²³ From the outset Foscolo tried to support the Pargiots’ request to be annexed to the Ionian Islands, liaising with his friend Count Kapodistrias, the Pargiots’ representative in London and future President ²⁰ Ibid., p. 32. ²¹ Foscolo, Narrative of Events Illustrating the Vicissitudes and the Cession of Parga (1820), in EN, 13, I, p.285. ²² Foscolo, ‘On Parga’, Edinburgh Review (1819), in EN, 13, i, pp. 65–102. ²³ On the history of the Ionian islands and the cession of Parga and the other mainland dependencies see at least W. D. Wrigley, The Diplomatic Significance of Ionian Neutrality, 1821–31 (New York, 1988), pp. 80–1; M. Pratt, Britain’s Greek Empire (London, 1978).

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of the Republic of Greece, and lobbying his acquaintances in parliament, like Sir Charles Monck, whose speech against the sale of Parga he had directly inspired.²⁴ The political controversy surrounding this event was closely associated with a dispute over the character and identity of the populations of the region. John Cam Hobhouse’s record of his trip with Byron in 1809 to the Ionian Islands, Parga and the whole of Albania is worth referring to not only for the light it casts on English views of the region, but also because it is directly relevant to Foscolo’s reconstruction of the events surrounding Parga’s cession.²⁵ As Maria Todorova has pointed out, the central feature to emerge from western representations of the Balkans between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was that of its ‘transitionary status’. A region like Albania evoked images of a bridge or crossroads between East and West, and represented an ambiguous space between barbarity and civilization, geographically still in Europe, belonging to Christianity but culturally different from western Europe.²⁶ Hobhouse’s description of the region’s inhabitants reflected this ambiguity. He in fact found reasons to denigrate both the Greek-Christian and the Muslim elements in Albanian society. To Foscolo’s friend, Albanians were ‘avaricious’ and ‘averse from every habit of active industry’, apart from a natural passion for warfare, which made them some of the most bloodthirsty people of the Levant.²⁷ Their religious practices as Christian Orthodox amounted to little more than ‘degraded superstition’, to the extent that they could not ‘be distinguished from the Mahometans’.²⁸ Hobhouse claimed that, as a refuge for robbers excluded from the surrounding territories by the Pasha’s troops, Parga hosted ‘among the worst of the Albanians’.²⁹ Foscolo’s reassessment of Parga’s cession in the Edinburgh Review entailed a departure from this interpretation. His reconstruction of the territory’s political history since the fifteenth century was designed to show how for centuries it had been a Christian barrier against the Turks, a European outpost which had enabled the Venetian Republic to block the advance of the Muslims.³⁰ He replaced Hobhouse’s dismissive description of the Pargiots with a more favourable evaluation, and judged that the Pasha’s prejudices had led the English writer astray: Remarkably industrious, gay, and hospitable—the men handsome and sober, with more than the characteristic bravery of the climate—and the women chaste and unwatched, and cheerfully devoted to their primitive tasks and pastimes. All observers indeed concur in stating, that the smiling aspect of this little territory, and the busy prosperity of its ²⁴ E. R.Vincent, Ugo Foscolo: An Italian in Regency England (Cambridge, 1953), pp. 109–12. ²⁵ J. C. Hobhouse, A Journey through Albania and Other Provinces of Turkey in Europe and Asia to Constantinople during the Years 1809 and 1810 (London, 1813). ²⁶ M. Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (New York and Oxford, 1997), pp. 15–17. ²⁷ Hobhouse, A Journey, pp. 139–40, 145. ²⁸ Ibid., p. 147. ²⁹ Ibid., p. 169. ³⁰ Foscolo, Parga, p. 78.


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inhabitants, formed but lately a striking contrast to the wastes and ruins with which it was everywhere surrounded.³¹

Central to Foscolo’s representation of the historical events surrounding the cession of Parga was also Ali Pasha, the famous Ottoman governor of Ioannina who since the beginning of the century had risen to become a semi-independent ruler over the northern mainland of Greece, and had represented a constant threat to Parga’s independence until he finally managed to purchase it in 1819. Foscolo’s narrative features all the themes and tropes which, according to Kate Fleming, were to be found in contemporary European representations of his character, and which turned Ali into an oriental or Ottoman ideal-type, and the negation of all western ethical and religious values.³² Listing the numerous massacres of men, women, and children marking Ali’s conquests of villages and his reprisals against former enemies, whom he would otherwise spare only for the slave market, Foscolo defined him as ‘the most brutal barbarian of his age’.³³ Hobhouse, by contrast, had offered in his travel book a more complex assessment of Ali, whom he and Byron had met personally in Ioannina. While not denying his cruelty, Hobhouse presented him as a ‘very great man’, and praised him for having successfully made the region safer by keeping banditry at bay and improving its road system.³⁴ Two anecdotes in particular were employed by Foscolo to highlight the patriotism of the Pargiots and project an image of dignity and nobility which stood out in sharp contrast to the barbarity and cruelty of Ali and his troops. Describing the events leading up to the handing over of the Ionian Islands to the British in 1815, Foscolo reported in full an elderly Pargiot’s speech to his community, in which the old man recalled their successful efforts in maintaining independence in similarly difficult circumstances. He likened the speech, which was obviously his own literary invention, to those in Thucydides, highlighting its eloquent language and prophetic spirit, thereby drawing a parallel between contemporary Pargiots and ancient Greeks.³⁵ In Foscolo’s account, however, it was the cession of the town to Ali and the departure of all the villagers at the climax of the story, that was most laden with symbolic meaning. Before leaving their village, the Pargiots marched to the cemetery to burn the remains of their ancestors and, ‘setting fire to the pile, stood motionless and silent around it, till the whole was consumed’.³⁶ Foscolo constructed the idea of community through an almost visual representation, which could evoke the idea of a patria in the readers’ imaginations through concrete metaphors. It comes as no surprise that Foscolo’s account of events in Parga gained the unconditional approval of the Italian Romantics, who could read them in the ³¹ Ibid., p. 79. ³² Fleming, The Muslim Bonaparte. ³⁴ Hobhouse, A Journey, pp. 35, 117, 121. ³⁵ G. Gambarin, Introduzione to Foscolo, EN, 13, i, p. lxxvii.

³³ Foscolo, Parga, p. 73. ³⁶ Foscolo, Parga, p. 102.

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light of their own patriotism.³⁷ This final image in Foscolo’s article was further developed by the Lombard Romantic poet and exile Giovanni Berchet in his poem I profughi di Parga (1821): in its closing verses the villagers leaving their homeland for ever take with them into exile a branch, a bush or a sod of earth as souvenirs of their patria. In his Introduction to the poem Berchet provided a patriotic reading of Parga’s cession, likening the fate of Parga to that of all the oppressed nations of Europe.³⁸ Similar philhellenic manipulations of this otherwise minor event in diplomatic history can be found in numerous contemporary French and English literary representations of Parga’s cession.³⁹ Yet these sentiments were far from being universally shared. A refutation of Foscolo’s story was published in the Quarterly Review, a Tory journal in which Sir John Burrow defended the government’s decision and objected to the ‘degree of compassion which has been excited for the Parganotes’, as ‘extravagant’.⁴⁰ As Peter Cochran has shown, the Quarterly Review, employing Hobhouse’s Journey to challenge Foscolo’s assertions, observed that the inhabitants of Parga shared with the other Epirotes, renowned for their ferocity, ‘a spirit of lawless enterprize and plunder’.⁴¹ In addition, the writer refused to see the affair in terms of a clash between Christianity and Islam, preferring to portray Parga as part of the same brutal, uncivilized eastern world, in which, after all, Albanian robbers were Christian.⁴² Finally, the Quarterly Review dismissed Foscolo’s description of the last moments of the Pargiots’ celebration as a spurious anecdote and literary invention or, according to Sir John Burrow, a mere ‘fabrication’.⁴³ Foscolo’s article was published in the Parisian Revue encyclopédique in 1820 with the addition of an anonymous note attacking the Quarterly Review’s point of view, condemning Ali as a brutal tyrant and calling for the independence of Greece under the guidance of a ‘generous prince, of noble character’.⁴⁴ As to Byron, who had probably read Foscolo’s article, he surprisingly paid little attention to the events, and when in 1823 he visited the Ionian Islands, was approached by self-proclaimed exiles from Parga but dismissed them as ‘barbarians’.⁴⁵ By contrast, Foscolo and Berchet manipulated Parga’s cession to point to East and West, Christianity and Islam, civilization and barbarity as polar opposites, with Parga as the eastern boundary of Europe. The elaboration of these ³⁷ Foscolo, Parga, p. 71. ³⁸ G. Berchet, I Profughi di Parga, ‘Avvertissement de l’auteur’ in Berchet, E. Bellorini (ed.), Opere, 2 vols (Bari, 1911), i, p. 4. ³⁹ On the theme of Parga in contemporary French and British poetry see N. Caccia, ‘L’episodio di Parga in alcuni componimenti poetici francesi e inglesi’, in Studi sul Berchet (Milan, 1951), pp. 387–417. ⁴⁰ J. Burrow, ‘Parga’, Quarterly Review, 22 (1820), 111–36, at 134. ⁴¹ Ibid., 124–5. ⁴² Ibid., 125. ⁴³ Ibid., 136. ⁴⁴ ‘Notice sur Parga et sur Ali Pacha’, Revue encyclopédique, 12 (1820), 418–54; 13 (1820), 17–32. The comment was published at pp. 30–2. ⁴⁵ P. Cochran, ‘The Sale of Parga and the Isles of Greece’, Keats–Shelley Review, 14 (2000), 42–51; idem, ‘Nature’s Gentler Errors: Byron, the Ionian Islands, and Ali Pacha’, The Byron Journal, 23 (1995), 22–35


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ideas represented a fundamental feature of the justification by Italian philhellenes of their involvement in the Greek revolution. Indeed the Greek Ugo Foscolo, like his contemporary Andrea Mustoxidi, actively participated in the European creation and embellishment of these themes when in exile and as a consequence became also a ‘philhellene’.⁴⁶ The contrasts between, on the one hand, the Greek and the Italian perspectives, and, on the other, English interpretations of the nature and degree of civilization of the region were to resurface at the height of the Greek war of independence. Yet while most Italian exiles became fervent philhellenes and agreed to support the activities of the London Greek Committee, Foscolo refused to accept the invitation by his Whig and Radical friends to join the Committee, not least because of his disappointment with their involvement in Parga’s affairs.⁴⁷

I TA L I A N A N D E N G L I S H PH I L H E L L E N I S M S AT O D D S : N AT I O N A L P RO J E C T O R C I V I L I Z I N G M I S S I O N ? Most of the English philhellenes involved in the Greek revolution were answerable, directly or indirectly, to the London Greek Committee. Edward Blaquiere, and later Leicester Stanhope, became agents of the Committee in Greece, where they had to support the military and philanthropic projects financed from England and report back to the Committee in London.⁴⁸ Byron volunteered to go to Greece on behalf of the Committee in the spring of 1823.⁴⁹ There is some evidence that from the outset John Bowring and various other members of the London Greek Committee did not look kindly upon the Italian exiles’ involvement in the Greek cause. Bowring advised the Greek deputies in London, Ioannis Orlando and Andrea Luriottis, against supporting Santarosa’s trip to Greece.⁵⁰ A first source of tension revolved around the control of the money raised by the Committee, and the role the Greek deputies played in financial management. Most members of the London Greek Committee, supported by Jeremy Bentham, in fact soon came to mistrust the Greek deputies in London. Blaquiere, who had been the most popular English philhellene in Greece, was increasingly scathing about the Committee’s actions.⁵¹ Among the philhellenes the question of the ⁴⁶ On this aspect of Mustoxidi’s cultural profile see Zanou, ‘Andrea Mustoxidi’, p. 154. ⁴⁷ For the reasons behind his refusal to join the Committee see Foscolo, Lettera Apologetica, in EN, 13, II, pp. 233–41. ⁴⁸ Rosen, Bentham, Byron and Greece, pp. 135–6, 145. ⁴⁹ Ibid. ⁵⁰ Letter of Orlando and Louriottis to the London Greek Committee, 13 Nov. 1824, in E. Dalleggio, Les philhellénes et la guerre de l’independance (Athens, 1949), p. 121. Santorre di Santarosa to Victor Cousin, 31 October 1824, in Santorre di Santarosa, Lettere dall’esilio (1821–25), ed. A. Olmo (Rome, 1969), p. 461. ⁵¹ Rosen, Bentham, Byron and Greece, p. 181.

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Greek loan caused further strife between Stanhope, Bowring, and Hume on one side, and Blaquiere and the Italian exiles on the other. Palma and Blaquiere considered the Committee’s demand that it, rather than the Greeks, should control the allocation of the money, an unforgivable attack on the independence of that nation. They also blamed the Committee for the delay in the dispatch of the first loan. The Italian exiles and the Greek deputies believed that Stanhope was responsible for the defeat of the Greeks at Ipsara and the subsequent massacre of the population.⁵² Conversely, Bowring and Stanhope were convinced that only if the Committee directly controlled the loan would the money be safely invested.⁵³ Yet these disagreements served to mask deeper ideological tensions between Italian and English philhellenes. In order to understand the intellectual and practical origins of this clash, some account must be given of the specific concerns of the Italian volunteers. It was the Italians’ firm belief that all the philhellenes’ efforts had to be devoted to ensuring the success of the revolution and to supporting the creation of a strong, independent Greek government. Indeed, constitutional and institutional concerns lay at the heart of their philhellenism. In a letter written to Orlando in 1824, Count Pietro Gamba summarized the Italians’ opinions about the Greeks’ most urgent needs: ‘the first necessity in your homeland is the stability of a government, and the latter will never be able to rule until it has a body of regular troops at its disposal’.⁵⁴ Palma and Pecchio thought that since Greece was a country rebelling against an oppressor it needed a strong central government to lead the war of insurrection and distribute the money from the loan more wisely.⁵⁵ If necessary, Palma believed, one should even go so far as to appoint a dictator.⁵⁶ These remarks were undoubtedly triggered by the fact that a civil war had broken out in the summer of 1824 among the various Greek political and military factions.⁵⁷ Although a central government and constitution existed formally, they had never worked in practice. Just before the war Prince Mavrokordatos, former Secretary General of the Executive and briefly in July President, became leader of the faction of the ‘national party’ and the chiefs of western Greece. In the context of these chaotic political conditions, the Italians pinned all their hopes on him, since he had spent a long exile in Europe before going back to Greece at the beginning of the revolution, and was in favour of a western-style centralized government.⁵⁸ ⁵² See Luriottis’s letter to Prince Mavrokordatos, dated 28 Nov. 1824, GSAA, Mavrokordatos Papers, 9b. The letter, signed by Luriottis was in fact written by Pecchio. ⁵³ Bowring, ‘Greek Committee’, Westminter Review, 6 (1826), 113–33, at p. 120. ⁵⁴ Gamba to Orlando, London, 11 September, no year, in CNRA, Orlando and Louriottis Papers. ⁵⁵ G. Pecchio, Relazione degli avvenimenti della Grecia nella primavera del 1825 (1826), in SP, p. 208; Palma, Greece Vindicated, pp. 24, 28–9, 180. ⁵⁶ Ibid., pp. 180, 229. ⁵⁷ Dakin, The Greek Struggle, pp. 123–32. ⁵⁸ Ibid., p.106.


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Although they might have different opinions on whether a federal, republican, or monarchical constitution should be introduced in Greece, all the Italian exiles saw emancipation and political freedom as a precondition for Greece becoming a nation.⁵⁹ In his Political Catechism to the Greek Youth, a commentary upon the Greek constitution of 1823 addressed to the youngest citizens of Greece, Palma stressed the close relationship between the consolidation of Greek patriotism and the existence of a constitution which would provide the Greeks with the shared values and rights they needed to become a nation, a view he shared with Mavrokordatos.⁶⁰ Like the revolutionary catechisms published in Italy between 1796 and 1799, his pamphlet responded to the need felt by supporters of the new order to educate the younger generations about the new institutions, with the aim of forming citizens attached to their patria.⁶¹ Palma justified his support for the emancipation of Greece on the grounds that it would spread universal values, and at the same time acknowledged that Greek national identity was the product of historical and cultural specificities. Palma upheld religious pluralism as a fundamental principle of the new Greek society and condemned the intolerance of the Turkish government, on the grounds that the coexistence of different religions was beneficial to a society’s morality, as it stimulated a competition for virtue.⁶² However, he explicitly acknowledged that it was through religion that the Greeks felt themselves to be part of the European family, and supported the Greek Constitution’s discrimination against ‘Turkish-Asian customs and habits’, maintaining that they represented a threat to the stability of the new country.⁶³ Palma’s constitutional patriotism and the Italian exiles’ emphasis on institutionbuilding was a far cry from the philhellenism of the London Greek Committee members. In particular, Stanhope’s attitude was in sharp contrast to those of the Italian philhellenes. He declared himself a follower of Bentham and advocated freedom of the press in Greece, the introduction of a national school system, and the establishment of a republic, all according to the principles set out in Bentham’s Constitutional Code.⁶⁴ As Frederick Rosen has demonstrated, Stanhope thought that modern Greeks were neither a modern nor a civilized European people, but Asians who therefore had to be educated and provided with good ⁵⁹ Palma favoured a constitutional monarchy, while Pecchio favoured the establishment of a federal republic (Pecchio, Relazione degli avvenimenti, pp. 199–200; Palma, Greece Vindicated, pp. 49, 50, idem, Lettre de l’auteur de Greece vindicated a` Luis Frusinate sur son ouvrage ‘De la force dans les choses politiques’ [London, 1826], pp. 29–30). Palma to Mavrokordatos ‘Secretaire Général du gouvernment Provisoire de la Grèce’, Hydra, Jan.1825, in GSAA, Mavrokordatos Papers. ⁶⁰ Political Catechism to the Greek Youth (Hydra, 1826), p. 36. I am grateful to Andrea Capra for kindly translating the Greek original for me. ⁶¹ L. Guerci, Istruire nelle verità repubblicane: La letteratura politica per il popolo nell’Italia in rivoluzione (1796–1799) (Bologna, 1999). ⁶² Political Catechism, pp. 8–9, 17. ⁶³ Ibid., pp. 51–2. ⁶⁴ Rosen, Bentham, Byron and Greece, pp. 157–61. However, Rosen stresses the fact that Stanhope used Bentham’s theories instrumentally and developed his own ideology.

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liberal institutions and constitutional rights like the Indians in Hindustan, whose right to a free press Stanhope had previously defended.⁶⁵ The Greeks, Stanhope believed, were not mature citizens, but ‘children’ without political education, capable also of displaying the most extreme barbarity. He and W. H. Humphreys in fact blamed them for their massacres of the Turks.⁶⁶ For this reason the Benthamites had no doubt that the establishment of schools and the introduction of new newspapers fostering liberal principles and utilitarian beliefs were even more important than independence itself.⁶⁷ In pursuance of their plans Stanhope and Humphreys were inclined to back the military chief Odisseas, an irregular troop leader who enjoyed considerable power in eastern Greece and whom they found willing to back their philanthropic projects, although probably only for ulterior motives (money from the English loan) and not because he was sincerely committed to their schemes.⁶⁸ Neither of them had a high opinion of Mavrokordatos—the prince popular with all European philhellenes and admired by the Italian exiles—since he disapproved of their advocacy of a free press.⁶⁹ It was Alerino Palma who engaged in a dispute with the London Greek Committee, and openly attacked the action and the ideas of two of its members, Stanhope and Humphreys. What was particularly intolerable to Palma was the fact that the efforts of these philhellenes and the London Greek Committee in general to improve Greek society were accompanied by a patronizing attitude towards the country’s inhabitants to the extent that he accused Humphreys of seconding Stanhope’s ‘wish to drill the Greeks like the Anglo-Indians’.⁷⁰ Indeed, the Italian exiles had no time for the English philhellenes’ infatuation with Greek chieftains in traditional dress, like Byron’s exotic Giaour, whose oriental appearance evoked in the English imagination the authenticity of the native culture. Indeed, they supported the westernized and ostensibly European Mavrokordatos, who ‘dresse[s] like a Frenchman . . . speaks French with elegance and ease’.⁷¹ Palma dismissed Stanhope and Humphreys’ allegations regarding the barbarity of the Greeks, ⁶⁵ Rosen, Bentham, Byron and Greece, pp. 147–51, Stanhope, Greece in 1823 and 1824; being a Series of Letters, and Other Documents, on the Greek Revolution, Written during a Visit to that Country, (London, 1825), pp. 80. ⁶⁶ W. H. Humphreys, ‘Journal of a visit to Greece’, in A Picture of Greece in 1825: As Exhibited in the Personal Narratives of James Emerson Esq., Count Pecchio and W. H. Humphreys, Esq., 2 vols (London, 1826), ii, pp. 310–11. See also J. Emerson’s ‘Journal of a Residence among the Greeks in 1825’, in A Picture of Greece, i, pp. 218–22. ⁶⁷ Rosen, Bentham, Byron and Greece, p.150. ⁶⁸ Greece in 1823, pp. 125–6. On Odisseas see St. Clair, That Greece Might Still be Free, pp. 103–4. ⁶⁹ Rosen, Bentham, Byron and Greece, pp. 152–3; Stanhope, Greece in 1823, p. 100. Mavrokordatos thought that a free press would do harm to the Greek cause, since the European conservative powers would have been hostile to it. ⁷⁰ Greece Vindicated, p. 260. ⁷¹ On this aspect of English philhellenism, in contradiction with the claim that Greece should be westernised, see D. Roessel, In Byron’s Shadow: Modern Greece in the English and American Imagination (Oxford, 2002), p. 52. The quotation is from Pecchio, Relazione degli avvenimenti, p. 178.


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accounting for their less than correct conduct during the war in terms of their long period of slavery under despotic Turkish domination.⁷² He pointed to the fact that even in English history there were examples of savage cruelty.⁷³ On the question of the free press Palma sided with Mavrokordatos, since in his opinion the battle for such a liberty was somewhat meaningless in a country divided into factions, where libel and calumnies could undermine the already weak central government and the very struggle for independence itself.⁷⁴ With the support of Parry’s The Last Days of Lord Byron, the exiles transformed the poet into a supporter of their own brand of philhellenism. Parry’s publication had been instrumental in propagating the myth of Lord Byron’s bitter disputes with Stanhope, ‘the typographical Colonel’. Lord Byron, wrote Parry, had rejected both the latter’s oddities and his Benthamism; against Stanhope’s exclusive concern with educating the Greeks, he had proclaimed ‘independence first, then schools’.⁷⁵ Byron’s sympathy for the cause of Italian patriotism, his concern for the Greek national struggle, along with his support for Mavrokordatos and lack of enthusiasm for freedom of the press, perfectly matched the ideas of Palma, Pecchio, and Gamba. As a matter of fact, as David Roessel and Nigel Leask have shown, Byron’s attitude towards the independence of Greece was at the least ambivalent, since the poet was doubtful about the country’s capacity to govern itself. Wavering between supporting a protectorate and advocating a form of independent government, Byron, until the end of his life at Missolonghi, doubted the Greeks’ ability, after centuries of tyranny and slavery, to overcome the lack of organization and internal dissension that had marked the war.⁷⁶ However, Palma and the Italian exiles, subscribing to the prevailing mood of continental public opinion and its interpretation of Byron’s work, felt that the English poet was very much on their side, and read his Childe Harold as a great political manifesto in favour of both Italian and Greek emancipation. Their publications thus contributed to the fortune of Byron as a philhellenic icon in Europe after his death. Count Pietro Gamba, the Italian carbonaro who had accompanied Byron to Missolonghi, wrote a memoir about that experience, and provided material for the construction of the myth of Byron as a romantic hero, a man of action who had died to liberate Greece.⁷⁷ Another Italian exile, the Marquis di Salvo, in his Lord Byron en Italie et en Grèce (1825), elaborated on this myth, and through an analysis of Byron’s works and letters gave a moderate, anti-republican and almost anti-revolutionary reading of Byron’s support for the emancipation of both Greece and Italy. ⁷² Greece Vindicated, pp.132, 201 ⁷³ Ibid., pp. 161–2. ⁷⁴ Ibid., p. 255. ⁷⁵ Rosen, Bentham, Byron and Greece, pp. 195–204. See also M. Kelsall, Byron’s Politics (Sussex, 1987), p. 84. ⁷⁶ Roessel, In Byron’s Shadow, pp. 50–1, 73–5; N. Leask, British Romantic Writers and the East (Cambridge, 1992), p. 23; V. Goldsworthy, Inventing Ruritania: The Imperialism of the Imagination (New Haven and London, 1998), pp. 17–18. ⁷⁷ Roessel, In Byron’s Shadow, p. 80.

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Admittedly, the Italian exiles, like the majority of European philhellenes, returned from Greece with few illusions as to the real possibility of establishing a stable government and organizing an efficient army, and frustrated in their hopes of joining the Greek government as advisors.⁷⁸ Indeed, their private letters and documents reveal that their assessment of the Greek leadership and of the character of the population was not entirely different from that of the Benthamites. The Piedmontese philhellene Giacinto Collegno, a former officer in the Constitutional army during the Spanish revolution and a friend of Palma, Santarosa, and Pecchio, provides a particularly striking example—manifested in his diary of the siege of Navarino, unpublished until 1857—of this ultimate disillusionment with the Greek cause.⁷⁹ For Collegno the Greek leadership was corrupt and out to use funds for their own purposes, though Ypsilanti, ‘the only civilized Greek’, was an exception; the Greek soldiers were indolent and incapable of any military discipline.⁸⁰ Pecchio observed that the transformation of Greece into a fully fledged European country was no quick or easy task, as the Greeks ‘sit a` la Turque (and will continue to do so for a long time to come). They eat pilaw a` la Turque; they smoke with long pipes; they write to the left; they walk out accompanied by troops of armed people; they salute; they sleep; and they loiter about, a` la Turque’.⁸¹ Palma noted that the Greeks ‘seem to consider themselves as inhabitants of Asia, although they occupy a good position in Europe’, and ‘often said to me ‘‘you Europeans’’ ’.⁸² However, the Italians’ general view of the Greek problem did not alter. Although the differences in opinion regarding Greece did not affect personal relationships between Italian exiles and English Radicals, the allocation of the second loan gave rise to still more acrimonious disputes.⁸³ In 1826 Palma published a pamphlet, A Summary Account of the Steamboats for Lord Cochrane’s Expedition, in which he accused Bowring and the London Greek Committee of squandering the money raised to build steamboats necessary for continuing the war. Likewise, Bowring blamed the Greek deputies in London for all the mismanagements involving the money advanced through the second loan.⁸⁴ In agreement with Stanhope, he considered the Greek leaders and ⁷⁸ J. Millingen, Memoirs of the Affairs of Greece (London, 1831), p. 271. ⁷⁹ G. Collegno, Diario dell’Assedio di Navarino ( Turin, 1857), pp. 39, 40, 41. ⁸⁰ Ibid., pp. 46, 80, 103. ⁸¹ Relazione degli avvenimenti, p. 159. ⁸² Palma, Greece Vindicated, p. 65. ⁸³ In a letter written to Bowring in April 1826 Palma, thanking his correspondent for his friendship, reaffirmed the reasons for his disagreement with Humphreys and Stanhope and rejected allegations that he had plagiarized the work of Blaquiere and Parry, or been manipulated by Greek deputies intent on furthering their personal interests through his book. Palma to Bowring, 4 Apr. 1826, Houghton Library, Harvard College Library, MS Eng 1247.1, Sir John Bowring, Letters from various Correspondents, Series 1, 18. ⁸⁴ Rosen, Bentham, Byron and Greece, pp. 270–1. Palma, A Summary Account of the Steamboats for Lord Cochrane’s Expedition (London, 1826), pp. 33–6.


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ruling class in general to be corrupt and unreliable, and supported Stanhope’s commitment to Greece but showed a similarly patronizing attitude towards its inhabitants.⁸⁵ To Frederick Rosen the clash of ideas between Stanhope and Blaquiere suggests that, in this dispute arising among different kinds of liberalism, there was a glaring conflict between nationalism (the struggle for independence with the main purpose of combating despotism) and authoritarian liberalism (the establishment of institutions offering better education and providing basic freedoms such as that of the press but without political rights).⁸⁶ Certainly, Rosen’s remark about the existence of a conflict between primarily national and primarily liberal concerns might be extended to cover the exiles’ contribution to the debate over the Greek war of independence. The belief that military success had to be the main concern shows how the exiles had developed for Greece a revolutionary ideology similar to that applied in the cases of Italy, Spain, and Mexico, one aimed at emancipation and state-building. Palma spent the rest of his life in Greece, where as a lawyer he was concerned with the establishment of a proper judiciary. He advocated the immediate creation of courts during the revolution with judges de facto at first, and later de jure.⁸⁷ Pecchio’s involvement in the improvement of the Greek school system shows that the objectives of the Italians could be consistent with the utilitarian projects sponsored by the London Greek Committee, although he believed that it was first and foremost through the actual winning of independence that the Greeks would learn to be free.⁸⁸ At another level, however, the ideological clash sketched out here was a conflict in cultural representation, in which two different geographies of civilization were opposed. The systematic denigration of the Greek leadership and the condemnation of their barbarity by Stanhope and Bowring reveal both how the Benthamites adopted a discourse to justify their actions and that their imperial and colonial approach to the Greek war was undoubtedly affected by their perception of the role England and its purportedly superior culture had to play in the world.⁸⁹ Although the Benthamites believed the Greeks were entitled to be emancipated from the Turks, and judged them to be not quite as barbaric as their oppressors, they consistently viewed them as an inferior population, whose mores lay beyond the boundaries of civilization set by England. The Italians fiercely resisted this interpretation, which turned Greece into a western ⁸⁵ ‘Greek Committee’, Westminster Review, 6 (1826), 113–33, at p. 133. ⁸⁶ Rosen, Bentham, Byron and Greece, pp. 294–300. ⁸⁷ Palma, Greece Vindicated, p. 25. ⁸⁸ See ‘Détails sur l’état de l’instruction publique, sur les académies, les lycées, les ećoles philologiques et d’enseignement mutuel, dans les îles et sur le continent de la Grèce’, Revue encyclopédique, 27 (1825), 913–17. ⁸⁹ On the extent to which this term can be applied to the Greek case see K. Fleming, ‘Orientalism, the Balkans and Balkan Historiography [Review Essay]’, American Historical Review 105 (2000), 1218–33. On the importance of civilization to define English character in the period see P. Mandler, The English National Character: The History of an Idea from Edmund Burke to Tony Blair (London, 2006) pp. 29–38.

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appendage of despotic Asia, a brutally corrupt society which only northern European paternal guidance could civilize. Against this vision they opposed a new map of Europe, whose eastern boundaries had been enlarged to include Greece. In reality, the Greeks may not have been ready to be free, and the Greek government may have been nothing more than a cluster of competing factions, as the Italians were soon to discover, but the exiles nonetheless needed to believe in the Greek national myth in order to defend a similar one that they had shaped for Italy, and to maintain a dialogue with westernized Greek patriots like Louriottis and Mavrokordatos. Accepting the notion of the Greeks as an oriental people would have shattered the claim that both the Greek and Italian causes were causes for universal progress, and quintessentially European in nature. In other words, the English stance threatened to undermine the whole ideological premise of Italian patriotism. While they were defending the Greeks’ right of self-determination, they were also engaged in a similar battle against the patronizing attitudes of northern European observers towards Italy as an uncivilized country.⁹⁰ The exiles’ belief that what was taking place in Greece was nothing less than the extension of the Risorgimento of their own country was reflected also in the tropes and arguments they developed in their philhellenic narratives, and in the way they transformed Santorre di Santarosa into one of the most famous European philhellenic icons.

I TA LY A N D G R E E C E A S M E D I T E R R A N E A N S I S T E R S As producers of philhellenic discourse, the Italian exiles participated in the invention and dissemination of a set of tropes that helped to turn the Greek quest for emancipation into an uncontroversial cause supported by European public opinion. To begin with, their writings reinforced the claim of its right to independence by projecting back in time its existence as a nation. For instance, they endorsed and helped to disseminate the views elaborated by Claude Fauriel in his Chants Populaires, where an emphasis on the continuity between ancient civilization and modern culture proved that contemporary Greeks had a distinguished and noble national character, unmistakably European and civilized. In line with Fauriel’s reinvention of modern Greece, the Italians believed that the Greeks from the islands were a population whose industrious mores, enterprising spirit and talent for commerce recalled those of the ancient Greek republics, and that they had retained the military and civic virtues of their ancestors.⁹¹ ⁹⁰ See, for instance, GianBattista Marochetti’s critique of De Pradt’s geopolitical proposals, which allegedly ignored Italy’s right to exist as a nation, and pushed the peninsula outside the boundaries of Europe, in his Indépendance de l’Italie (Paris, 1830), p. 37. ⁹¹ See S. di Santarosa to V. Cousin, London, 31 Oct. 1824; to his wife Carolina, dated Romania, 2 Apr. 1825, in Lettere dall’esilio, pp. 461 and 271. Pepe, ‘The Non-Establishment of


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Conversely, their historical narratives on ancient Greece could serve the purpose of linking ancient Greeks with modern Hellenes. In his Discours sur l’histoire de la Grèce (1817), Francesco Salfi offered a reinterpretation of ancient Greek history that could provide its readers with plentiful political messages relevant to contemporary Greeks and Europeans. In the introduction to the edition published after the first declaration of Greek independence, Salfi’s appropriation of another trope of European philhellenism, the Herodotean theme of the Greeks victorious over Persia, and the Aristotelian idea of the barbarity and servility of Asians, enabled him to draw a parallel between the ancient and modern struggle of Greece against foreign despotism.⁹² For Salfi, the Greek victory against the Persian Empire had incontrovertibly demonstrated ‘the superiority of a handful of free men over an infinite number of slaves’.⁹³ The most important lesson Salfi believed contemporaries could draw from Greek history was that of the link between liberty and unity, a principle which had been relentlessly advocated during the Triennio Rivoluzionario by Italian democrats, and of the need for cohesion in Greece if the constitutional government were to survive.⁹⁴ Some other tropes of the Italian exiles’ philhellenic discourse did not simply replicate or elaborate on already existing ideas, but represented a genuine and original contribution to European philhellenism. Among them the most important was the notion of the special relationship between Greece and Italy, a Mediterranean partnership based on cultural, historical, climatic, and geographical contiguities. The obvious observation that the two countries, both in the Mediterranean basin, had physical similarities, did in fact serve to reinforce the idea of their special bond. If, as has been observed, the symbolic analogy between a landscape and a nation can reinforce a national discourse by ‘naturalizing the nation’, then the exiles’ emphasis on the territorial and natural bond between Italy, Greece, and Spain provided a powerful and self-evident justification for their ideas of a specific southern European patriotism of nations participating in the same process of regeneration.⁹⁵ The Italian philhellenes employed the metaphors of family ties to describe the biological, natural relationship between the two nations. As Palma put it, ‘we Italians must look upon [Greece] as our mother country’.⁹⁶ Banti has observed that these metaphors were generally in evidence in the collective imagination of the generation of patriots, and that they served to formulate notions of the patria as a Liberty’, pp. 269; Pecchio, Relazione degli avvenimenti, pp. 165, 169. Compare with Fauriel, Chants populaires de la Grèce Moderne, 2 vols. (Paris, 1824), i, pp. viii–ix. ⁹² F. S. Salfi, Discours sur l’histoire de la Grèce (2nd edn, Paris, 1822), p. vii. On this philhellenic trope see Roessel, In Byron’s Shadow, pp. 27, 38. ⁹³ Salfi, Discours, p.39. ⁹⁴ Ibid., pp. 43–4. on this revolutionary trope see L. Jaume, L’individu effacé ou le paradoxe du libéralisme français (Paris, 1997), p. 72. ⁹⁵ See E. Kaufmann and O. Zimmer, ‘In Search of the Authentic Nation: Landscape and National Identity in Canada and Switzerland’, Nations and Nationalism, 4 (1998), 483–510. ⁹⁶ Greece Vindicated, pp. vii, 38.

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community based on family ties. What is striking here, however, is the existence of a variation on the same theme. Rather than being employed to describe the internal coherence of a national community, the metaphor is actually extended to relations between different nations, and different identities. The Italian philhellenes provided an additional dimension to this special relationship by pointing to its historical roots. Pecchio, for example, wrote of a historical link between the two Mediterranean sisters, and of a common history spanning two thousand years. In his view, ‘there [are] not perhaps two nations in the world like Greece and Italy, which, in their conduct, have so uniformly caused more good than evil to each other.’⁹⁷ He described Greek-Italian relations in terms of a shared contribution towards the dissemination and defence of freedom, from the time of the Sicilian Greek colonies, which had introduced the spirit of freedom to Italy, to the transporting to Constantinople of ‘the metropolis of the world’, to the Venetian defence of Greece against the Turks.⁹⁸ While there was nothing unusual about references to antiquity, what seems to be a peculiarity of Italian philhellenism was its tendency to refer to modern history when defining the qualities and virtues of the Greeks, and their contribution to European civilization. This served the purposes of including Greece in the movement of progress and civilization, a process that for the Romantics was essentially due to the modern, rather than the ancient world, and by the same token challenged the stereotype of a country which had been in terminal decline for centuries. This preoccupation with continuity, apparent in Pecchio’s short sketch of the historical ties between Greece and Italy, underpinned both contemporary Italian historiographic reconstructions of modern Italy and those reconstructions Greek patriots would produce in the decades to come, when they developed the notion of ‘cultural Hellenism’.⁹⁹ Alfio Grassi, for instance, maintained that contemporary Greeks, being ‘sober, industrious, active’, were superior to their ancient predecessors.¹⁰⁰ Furthermore, he went so far as to claim that Europeans were indebted not only to ancient Greeks because of their contribution to the birth of freedom, but also to modern Greeks. This was an unusual stance, as most British, German, and French philhellenes took the condescending view that the history of modern Greece had been one of decline, to be contrasted with the glories of ancient Greek civilization. In Grassi’s opinion, it was thanks to the courage and military ability of the modern Greeks, along with Venetians, that Europe had been saved from the Muslims at the battle ⁹⁷ G. Pecchio, ‘A Visit to Greece in the Spring of 1825’, in A Picture of Greece in 1825, i, pp.190, ‘Appendix E’. This appendix was neither included in the version published in the New Monthly Magazine (as ‘Greece in the Spring of 1825’, New Monthly Magazine, 14 (1825), 291–320, 409–27,) nor in the Italian translation published in Lugano in 1826. ⁹⁸ ‘A Visit to Greece’, pp. 191–5. ⁹⁹ A. Liakos, ‘The Construction of National Time: The Making of the Modern Greek Historical Imagination’, Mediterranean Historical Review, 16 (2001), 27–42. ¹⁰⁰ A. Grassi, Charte Turque, ou organisation religieuse, civile et militaire de l’Empire Ottoman: suivie de quelques réflexions sur la guerre des grecs contre les turcs, 2 vols (Paris, 1825), ii, p. 359.


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of Lepanto. When Venice lost Greece to the Ottoman Navy, it had entered a period of decline because of the transformation of the republic into an oligarchy, and then the Greeks rightly preferred Turkish domination to the more oppressive Venetian rule.¹⁰¹ Modern Greeks, Grassi claimed, had also far surpassed their classical ancestors in heroism, as the conduct of the soldiers and their womenfolk at Ipsara and Schio had proved.¹⁰² These notions of historical and geographical connection were further enhanced by the manipulation of Santorre di Santarosa’s death in Greece. With his sacrifice, the relationship between the regeneration of the two countries was given new symbolic meanings.

T H E L E G AC Y: S A N TO R R E D I S A N TA RO S A A N D T H E M A K I N G O F A PH I L H E L L E N I C I C O N The topoi around which the philhellenic discourse was built included not merely a set of key concepts, but also places and heroic figures and events. A typical example is the figure of Lord Byron, whose death in Greece turned him into a symbol of Greek patriotism through a number of literary and poetic representations. As Gilbert Heß, for instance, has demonstrated, Missolonghi was transformed into a mythical place for philhellenism. Its fame was sealed by the event of Byron’s death, which was immediately manipulated by his followers to boost the poet’s heroic credentials.¹⁰³ While the Italian philhellenes embraced Byron as their own hero, honoured for his support for both the Italian and the Greek cause, they also made their own contribution to European philhellenism through the heroic figure of Santorre di Santarosa. Among the philhellenes, his fame came second only to that of the English poet. Santarosa’s death in battle on the island of Sfacteria, just over a year after Byron died, was immediately reported by the European press, and the publication of his letters turned him into a truly international figure. What made Santarosa’s celebration as a hero distinctive was the fact that, while he was described in terms similar to those of other contemporary heroic volunteers, he was also represented as the embodiment of the special Italo-Greek relationship. Like most of the young Piedmontese liberals, Santarosa had been profoundly influenced by Alfieri and Foscolo. It was Alfieri who provided Santarosa with a model of heroism as self-affirmation. His experience as a Napoleonic and then Piedmontese military officer broadened the horizon of Alfierian heroism, linking the Romantic aspiration towards personal action with a specific collective goal, the liberation of the patria. This combination of personal feelings ¹⁰¹ Ibid., ii, pp. 444–9. ¹⁰² Ibid., ii, pp. 456–8. ¹⁰³ G. Heß, ‘Missolonghi. Genèse, transformations multimédiales et fonctions d’un lieu identitaire du philhellénisme’, in Espagne and Pécout (eds), ‘Philhellénismes’, pp.77–107.

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and political concepts became a distinctive feature of the rise of Romantic patriotism in the period.¹⁰⁴ This ‘heroic’ impulse of Santarosa’s Romantic personality, which channelled his desire to defeat tedium, inaction, and boredom, went hand in hand and coexisted with an opposite attitude, the need he felt, and the pleasure he took, in indulging in personal reflections, in retreating into the private sphere and into the enjoyment of family life.¹⁰⁵ Indeed, it was precisely to shake off a sense of boredom that he felt he needed an exceptional and meaningful motive to live, and Greece offered itself as the ‘solution’ to his moral restlessness.¹⁰⁶ What marked Santarosa’s desire to go to Greece is the typically Romantic dissatisfaction with one’s condition, which results in the longing to be somewhere and someone else.¹⁰⁷ Nonetheless, a tension and a wavering between action and reflection remained a constant feature of his psychological state until the very end of his life. While travelling towards Greece his reflective mood once more prevailed, and doubts about his decisions soon emerged. The trip became an opportunity to indulge in personal reflection, a voyage of the self, rather than a preparation for action.¹⁰⁸ Indeed, by the time he was approaching Greece, Santarosa had lost all enthusiasm for the purpose of his expedition, as it dawned on him that the real Greece would not live up to his expectations.¹⁰⁹ The reasons for this ‘pre-emptive’ disappointment stem from the very nature of Santarosa’s engagement with Greece. His approach to Greece had been primarily literary. He had left England for Greece with a copy of Plato’s Dialogues provided by Victor Cousin. The literary engagement with Hellas thus continued even during his residence in Greece. Once settled there, when the impossibility of taking a leading role in the Greek army and the hostility of the Greek leadership had become clear, he spent most of his time at Sfacteria reading Tacitus and Shakespeare.¹¹⁰ In this respect, Santarosa’s attitudes and reactions were in line with those of the overwhelming majority of European philhellenes. Exactly like Byron, Santarosa’s encounter with the real Greece, its problems, its military and political leadership, was marked by a profound disappointment. The Greece he had expected to visit was the heroic Greece of the past, the Greece of Plato’s Dialogues, and not a country where the revolutionaries were ridden with conflicts and the foreign volunteers greeted with hostility. After weeks of idleness, Santarosa was killed in Sfacteria on 9 May 1825 by a Turkish bullet.¹¹¹ ¹⁰⁴ P. Ginsborg, ‘Romanticismo e Risorgimento: io, l’amore e la nazione’, in Banti and Ginsborg (eds), Il Risorgimento, pp. 5–67. ¹⁰⁵ L. Mascilli Migliorini, Il mito dell’eroe: Italia e Francia nell’età della Restaurazione (2nd edn, Naples, 2003), pp. 48–52. ¹⁰⁶ Letter to V. Cousin, 31 october 1824, in Lettere dall’esilio, pp. 461–2. ¹⁰⁷ As Ginsborg reminds us in his ‘Romanticismo e Risorgimento’, p. 7. ¹⁰⁸ Santarosa to his wife, 28 November 1824, in Lettere dall’esilio, pp. 462–4. ¹⁰⁹ Cousin, ‘Ricordi’, in Santarosa, A. Luzio (ed.), La Rivoluzione Piemontese nel 1821 ( Turin et al., 1920), p. 63. ¹¹⁰ On his reading at Sfacteria see Collegno, Diario dell’Assedio, p. 46. ¹¹¹ On the last days of Santarosa in Greece see L. Storoni Mazzolani, ‘Sfacteria’, in Le sacre sponde. Storia di miti del mondo greco (Milan, 1984), pp. 15–23.


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It was with the publication of the letters written to his friends Victor Cousin and Giuseppe Pecchio just before his death that Santarosa became a philhellenic celebrity. Pecchio published a letter he had received from Santarosa in his memoirs of his trip to Greece, translated into English, French, and German. The letter was also republished in Le Globe in France.¹¹² Le Globe published another letter from Santarosa to Victor Cousin, which was also subsequently reprinted in the Belgian press.¹¹³ The publication of letters can facilitate the transformation of mental attitudes into models, and help further their dissemination as common rhetorical devices. This is why as soon as Santarosa’s letters became public documents, their content could in turn be identified with philhellenism itself. In the nineteenth century the publication of ‘intimate’ letters as private confessions became a very popular form of literature. As Christine Planté has observed, the public access to a private letter provided by a periodical or a book is based on a paradox, that of transforming intimate, private emotions into universal models through their publication, an act which represents the betrayal of their private nature.¹¹⁴ Santarosa’s letter to Cousin contains a number of key concepts that merit closer study. In writing to Cousin, Santarosa first of all reaffirmed the philhellenic belief in the direct relationship between ancient and modern Greeks, thus revealing the literary nature of his philhellenism, Greece being ‘the fatherland of Socrates’. Second, he described his decision to fight in Greece as a commitment to the cult of liberty, understood in Platonic terms as a divinity, and as a central element of a civil religion of patriotism, employing a language Victor Cousin would recognize as his own. Finally, he linked Italy and Greece’s destiny as sister countries, an idea, as discussed earlier, shared with the other Italian philhellenes. Indeed, the letter also contained direct evidence of Santarosa’s uncertainty about his chances of success, and also of the appeal that a quiet life of reflection still had for him along with a yearning for action.¹¹⁵ His doubts loom even larger in the letter published by Pecchio, in which he confessed to not understanding modern Greek, and to not having sufficient financial means to be of real use.¹¹⁶ ¹¹² His memoirs appeared as ‘A Visit to Greece in the Spring of 1825’, New Monthly Magazine. In the United States they were republished in 1828 and 1829 in New York with the name History of the Greek Revolution. In France they appeared with the title Tableau de la Grèce en 1825 ou récit des voyages de M. J. Emerson et du Conte Pecchio (1826, Paris). They were also published in the same year in Bonaparte et les Grecs, par Madame Louise Sw. Belloc, suivi d’un tableau de la Grèce, en 1825, par le Comte Pecchio (Paris 1826). In Germany they were published as Bonaparte und die Griechen von Madame SW. Belloc nebst einem Gemalde von Griechenland im Jahre 1825 von dem Grafen Pecchio (Leipzig, 1827). Santarosa’s letter to Pecchio was published in Le Globe, 2 (24 Nov. 1825), 1. It can be read also in Olmo, Lettere dall’esilio, pp. 488–9. ¹¹³ Le Globe, 2 (26 Nov. 1825), 1; Mathieu Laensberg, 1 Dec. 1826, p. 3. The letter appeared also in Bonaparte et les Grecs, par Madame Louise SW. Belloc, pp. 394–5. ¹¹⁴ C. Planté, ‘L’Intime comme valeur publique. Les lettres d’Eugénie de Guérin’, in M. Bossis (ed.), La lettre a` la croisée de l’individuel et du social (Paris, 1994), pp. 82–90. ¹¹⁵ Lettere dall’esilio, pp. 461–2. On Cousin’s Platonism see Kelly, The Humane Comedy, pp. 146–68. ¹¹⁶ Lettere dall’esilio, p. 488.

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So far as the European press was concerned, this letter once again brought out Santarosa’s commitment to both Italian and Greek patriotism. For Le Globe, such a letter, written just before his death, represented a sort of spiritual testament, ‘He died thinking of Italy, with the sadness of an exile, with the grief of one who could do nothing for freedom, even in Greece, and nonetheless with the illusion of a patriot who has faith in his cause and never despairs.’¹¹⁷ For the Belgian newspaper Mathieu Laensberg, Santarosa’s letter to Cousin reflected the heroic qualities and patriotic attachment of the Italian philhellene to both countries.¹¹⁸ Besides publishing Santarosa’s letters to Cousin and Pecchio, in December 1825 Le Globe hosted Stendhal’s D’un nouveau complot contre les industriels, in which the author referred to Santarosa’s figure in a violent attack against the Saint-Simonians and industrialism. Stendhal used Santarosa’s heroic example to condemn those who upheld commercial values as supreme moral principles. Elaborating on a theme of European Romanticism, Stendhal argued that Santarosa and Byron, along with Bolívar, Riego, Lafayette, and Washington, possessed the superior moral qualities of the hero who sacrifices his life for the benefit of the community, rather than devoting himself to commercial gain.¹¹⁹ Stendhal thus contrasted heroism as an ethical commitment to the public good and to civic duties with the greedy individualism of the Restoration tradesmen and industrialists celebrated by the Saint-Simonians. He concluded his pamphlet thus: The thinking class has added this year Santa Rosa and Lord Byron to the names destined to become immortal. Here is a soldier, here a great gentleman; meanwhile what have the industrialists done? An honourable citizen has imported some goats from Tibet.¹²⁰

It is, however, Victor Cousin’s lengthy article in the Revue des Deux Mondes published on 1 March 1840 and reprinted in his Fragments et Souvenirs, 1857, that represents the most detailed and comprehensive attempt to turn Santarosa’s life into a model of heroism, one warmly welcomed by Italian patriots.¹²¹ In this biographical article Cousin constructed his narrative around Santarosa’s letters, interwoven with his own comments and exegesis in order to help the reader to interpret his friend’s own words. According to the post-revolutionary Romantic model of heroism, Cousin described Santarosa’s personality as one characterized by a virility moulded by his military qualities and the devotion to the nation.¹²² Although, as stressed above, Santarosa’s engagement with Greece ¹¹⁷ Le Globe, 2 (24 Nov. 1825), p. 1. ¹¹⁸ Mathieu Laensberg, 1 Dec. 1826, n. 285. ¹¹⁹ F. C. Beiser, Enlightenment, Revolution, Romanticism (Cambridge, 1992). ¹²⁰ I refer to an Italian edition: Stendhal, Di un nuovo complotto contro gli industriali, ed. M. Diani (Palermo, 1988), p. 39. ¹²¹ The article was republished by Luzio as ‘Ricordi’, in Santarosa, La Rivoluzione Piemontese. An example of its enthusiastic reception is in Collegno to Cousin, in J. Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire, M. Victor Cousin. Sa Vie et Sa Correspondance, 3 vols (Paris, 1895), i, pp. 684–5. ¹²² Riall, Eroi maschili, virilità e forme della guerra, pp. 254–5.


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had been primarily literary, Cousin claimed that he had been a soldier more than a man of letters.¹²³ In addition, he stressed the fact that he was a true ‘people’s’ hero by recalling that while the Greek government had first refused to build a monument in his honour at Sfacteria (and, when it was erected, had failed to attend its inauguration), the people and the soldiers flocked to pay homage to his memory.¹²⁴ In a dedication to Santarosa, originally published in his 1827 edition of Plato’s works, Cousin again celebrated the political commitments of his friend, arguing that Italy’s independence under the leadership of Savoy and the defence of an independent Greece from the Turks, though once apparently chimerical causes, would in the end be turned into reality.¹²⁵ The peculiarity of Santarosa’s case lay in his being a heroic philhellene whose virtues had the capacity to reconcile Italian with Greek patriotism in the guise of a joint political programme, as the coverage of his death in the European press clearly illustrates. This was in turn a powerful contribution to the Risorgimento, because by linking an Italian figure to the most popular political cause in Europe at the time, Santarosa provided the Italian patriots with an example of heroism which was both national and international, and raised the profile of Italy’s national question in Europe. Santarosa’s martyrdom in Greece became the tangible and compelling proof of what had been one of the key aspects of Italian philhellenism, namely the intimate connection between the two national projects. By contrast with Byron’s fate at Missolonghi, Santarosa’s death was not only an act of generosity of Europe towards Greece, but also a sacrifice offered by one victim of despotism for the sake of another.

C O N C LU S I O N S The invention of the idea of brotherhood made Italian philhellenism different from any other European variant. It can be seen as part of the Italian exiles’ strategy to acquire legitimacy for their own cause and to strengthen their case through the endorsement of Greek patriotism. This is why the Italian volunteers had chosen to emphasize the commonalities between the two countries even before Santarosa’s death. The fact that the special relationship between Italy and Greece, and the understanding of the Greek national cause as an extension of the Italian remained important tropes, is confirmed by the way that they endured within Italian philhellenic discourse and Italian liberal and democratic nationalism. At one time or another, both Italian and Greek patriots employed this idea to support their own cause and to make their own struggle seem more convincing. Until the end of the nineteenth century philhellenism continued to be closely linked to the different forms and declensions of Italian patriotism ¹²³ Cousin, Ricordi, p. 16. ¹²⁴ Ibid, pp. 65–6. ¹²⁵ Ibid, p. 67. Originally published in Cousin, Oeuvres de Platon, vol. 4 (Paris, 1827).

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developed after the 1820s. Every generation of Italian patriots endorsed the notion of Italo-Greek sisterhood.¹²⁶ Commemorating the Italian volunteers who had died in 1897 in Crete, Felice Cavallotti would still remember Santarosa as the founder of a modern tradition of Mediterranean solidarity.¹²⁷ In addition, this feature of Italian philhellenic discourse can tell us something more generally about the nature of patriotism and Romanticism in the nineteenth century. Historians of nationalism have tended to emphasize that in the dialogue with the ‘other’, the prevailing feature was the adoption of ideas of opposition between the national community and the enemy, as the national community was strengthened by formulating stereotypes of an ethnic and racial type, which resulted in the creation of exclusive, intolerant forms of national identity and nationalism. Hatred or the rejection of other communities, whose features represent the antithesis of one’s own, is the outcome of this dialogue with the other. It is thus that modern nationalism legitimates the exclusion from the state of those who do not conform to this narrow model of community.¹²⁸ This was also the case with metaphorical representations of the patria. Alberto Banti has shown how Risorgimento novels typically condemned any contact between the heroine, representing the patria, with the foreigner, who was generally seen as a threat to the purity and honour of the community. Violence and hatred were part also of the discursive elements of patriotism in literature, theatre, and visual representations.¹²⁹ This was undoubtedly already happening in the early nineteenth century. Foscolo, for example, was keen to highlight the fact that, in the history of Venice, what kept patriotism alive through the centuries was hostility to any form of foreign domination. Indeed, any national community in the process of being defined had an enemy to be cursed or dismissed as barbarian: the Spaniards were the enemies of Mexican patriots, the Austrians of Italians, the Turks of the Greeks, while Frenchness represented the polar opposite of British virtues.¹³⁰ As the Italian philhellenic discourse demonstrates, however, the notion of family ties was first and foremost used to describe the solidarity with other ‘sister’, ‘brother’, or ‘mother’ nations like Greece. Indeed, ¹²⁶ G. Pécout, ‘Amitié littéraire et amitié politique méditerranéennes: philhellènes français et italiens de la fin du xixe siècle’, in idem and Espagne ed., ‘Philhellénisme’, 207–18; idem, ‘Philhellenism in Italy: Political Friendship and the Italian Volunteers in the Mediterranean in the Nineteenth-Century’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 9 (2004), 405–27; A. Liakos, L’Unificazione Italiana e la Grande Idea, (Florence, 1995). ¹²⁷ F. Cavallotti, ‘I nostri morti in Grecia’ (1897), now in M. Ridolfi (ed.), La democrazia radicale nell’ottocento europeo (Milan, 2003), pp. 350–1. ¹²⁸ L. Colley, ‘Britishness and Otherness: An Argument’, Journal of British Studies, 31 (1992), 309–29; N. M. Wingfield, Creating the Other. Ethnic Conflict and Nationalism in Habsburg Central Europe (Oxford and New York, 2003). M. Nani, ‘La Nazione e i suoi altri’, Storica, 10 (2004), 95–119. ¹²⁹ A. M. Banti, L’onore della nazione: Identità sessuali e violenza nel nazionalismo europeo ( Turin, 2005), 91–2. ¹³⁰ On the specific case of Greece, see M. Efthymiou, ‘Cursing with a Message: The Case of Georgios Karaiskakis in 1823’, Historein, 2 (2000), 173–82.


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although the two metaphoric representations coexisted, I would argue that solidarity outweighed hostility in exilic patriotic discourse. Finally, the case of exile philhellenism reminds us that Romanticism did not exclusively produce emotional, pre-political or cultural notions of patria, or aspirations for individual liberty, but was also concerned with state-building and with legislation. In short, it had an important political and rational dimension. Although in the collective memory of the exiles’ contribution to the Greek revolution it was Santarosa’s personal sacrifice that prevailed, Palma’s writings and his dispute with English volunteers remind us that the exiles had been primarily concerned with the creation of a viable state in Greece and of functioning institutions.

5 Cosmopolitan Patriots: Freedom and Civilization as Global Processes I N T RO D U C T I O N One of the fundamental features of the ideology produced by the ‘liberal international’ was its belief in international solidarity and in the interconnectedness of all movements for emancipation worldwide. Hitherto, I have endeavoured in particular to highlight the role of the Spanish and Greek experiences in fostering cosmopolitan notions of freedom. The impact of the political order established at Vienna and the effect of European foreign policies on each and every insurrection made European and American liberals intensely aware of the constraint imposed by international politics upon their aspirations. The creation of a system of international relations replacing that set up by the Holy Alliance in 1815 thus remained one of the most prominent topics of transnational debate among exiles, patriots, and liberals on both sides of the Atlantic. For Edward Blaquiere, the support given by European liberals to the Spanish revolution was justified by the fact that ‘there is but one nation in Europe’.¹ The liberal international’s global understanding of the problem of freedom owed much to an idea of European and global civilization inherited from the eighteenth century, and this same idea served as a framework for their discussions on world politics. After 1814, however, the Enlightenment themes of the existence of a European society and civilization, and of the fundamental role played by commerce in promoting peace and civilization, were given new twists and updated, with a substantial contribution being made by French intellectuals.² Thus, eighteenth-century commercial cosmopolitanism was updated through the integration of new transnational phenomena such as technological change, mechanization, and the development of a truly global commerce. These themes were developed mainly by the French industrial school, from Benjamin Constant to Claude Henry de Saint-Simon and Charles Dupin, who called for the transmission of the industrial spirit from one society to the next, and ¹ Blaquiere, ‘Introduction’, to G. Pecchio, Anecdotes of the Spanish and Portuguese Revolutions (London, 1823), p. xx. ² On the idea of a ‘republic of commerce’ in the Enlightenment see, pp. 376–88.

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viewed commerce and industry promoted by the productive forces of society as instrumental in advancing peace, freedom, and civilization. One of the school’s strongest and most frequently reiterated messages was that, as a consequence of an unprecedented development of economic and intellectual links in the world economy, people were being brought together at a pace unseen before in history. The implicit assumption here was that France represented the centre and the heart of European civilization, which in turn was leading the process of civilizing the world. After the Napoleonic period, however, this advocacy of commerce and the circulation of ideas represented a frank condemnation of the spirit of conquest that had dominated Napoleon’s rule over Europe.³ This idea was also adopted by many French liberals like Théodore Jouffroy and Pierre Leroux to celebrate the birth of a new unified European continent under French leadership on the basis of a shared civilization and values. The decades following the fall of Napoleon were undoubtedly exceptionally fertile in producing new ideas of Europe. Some liberals, reviving a Kantian hope that international law might safeguard peace, went as far as to conceive of European federations or confederations based on shared supranational institutions.⁴ The most famous although not unique example of this revival was represented by Henri de Saint-Simon and Augustin Thierry’s De la réorganisation de la société européenne, published in 1814. For its authors the European people should be entitled to vote for the general laws of a reorganized European society, through the election of a European Parliament representing what would at first be a federation between England and France inspired by the American constitution but based on the British bicameral system, to be extended in the fullness of time to the rest of Europe. Such a system would reconcile national autonomy with the need to introduce laws for the general European interest.⁵ Neither the belief in the increasingly close association between free peoples nor this federal turn of liberal internationalism were confined to European thinkers, but emerged also within the restricted circles of Creole patriots leading the movements for emancipation. For the Guatemalan José Cecilio del Valle America was destined to reach the same level of civilization as Europe, so that together they would ³ As Constant argued in his De l’esprit de conquête et de l’usurpation (1814). An English version in B. Constant, Political Writings, ed. B. M. Fontana (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 49–148. On Constant’s idea of civilization see A. Pagden, ‘The ‘‘Defence of civilisation’’ in eighteenth-century social theory’, History of the Human Sciences, 1 (1988), 33–45. On industrialism see R. Romani, National Character and Public Spirit in Britain and France, 1750–1914 (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 99–117. ⁴ P. Leroux, ‘De l’Union Européenne’, Le Globe, 6 (24 Nov. 1827), 2–6. T. Jouffroy, ‘Etat actuel de l’humanité’ (1827), in idem, Mélanges Philosophiques (Paris, 1838), pp. 92–133. On Kant’s legacy in the early nineteenth century see B. Arcidiacono, ‘ ‘‘Non par la guerre, a` la manière des sauvages’’: Kant et l’avènement de l’état de droit entre les nations’, Journal of the History of International Law, 8 (2006), 39–89. A. Saitta, Dalla Res Publica Christianorum agli Stati Uniti di Europa (Rome, 1948), pp. 161–3. ⁵ De la réorganisation de la société européenne, ou de la nécessité et des moyens de rassembler les peuples de l’Europe en un seul corps politique, en conservant a` chacun son indépendance nationale (Paris, 1814).

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civilize the world: ‘united in adventurous harmony the sons of America and those of Europe would cooperate for the happiness of the African, the Asian, the Australasian’.⁶ The Congress of Panama of 1826 represented an attempt, albeit a failed one, to consolidate within a supranational legal and institutional framework the newly established system of independent republics. In Simón Bolívar’s vision, supported by del Valle and other Creole leaders, international law, a permanent congress, a supreme court to settle conflicts, and a joint army would, with the help of England, serve to consolidate the new republics by guaranteeing internal peace and creating an anti-despotic and liberal front.⁷ In Europe itself, Dominique de Pradt, writing that the ambition of the Congress to create a legal framework for international navigation and commerce would benefit the whole of humankind, reflected the enthusiasm of liberal circles for such a project.⁸ It is to the engagement of the exiles with these debates regarding the relations between nations, the international dimensions of the problem of freedom, and the need to reform the international order imposed on Italy and on other nations by the European powers after 1814 that the following sections will be devoted. As explained above, the experience of exile and involvement in revolutions in Spain, Latin America, and Greece fostered a political internationalism which was also the result of unintended consequences, namely, the expulsion of patriots from their countries of origin, and their greatly increased mobility. While the importance of Europe in the framing of the question of Italian freedom in the Risorgimento, from articles in the Conciliatore to the writings of Giuseppe Mazzini and Cesare Balbo, has long been recognized, no attention has been paid to the exiles’ contribution to the Risorgimento’s international notions of freedom.⁹ Although, as Salvo Mastellone has argued, Mazzini’s European project was not the result of a ‘sudden intuition’, but rather emerged from his contacts with Italian e´migrés and with the secret societies, as well as with the French republicans, Mazzini was extremely critical of the exiles’ understanding of freedom.¹⁰ It is perhaps a measure of his influence that the ‘cosmopolitan views’ of the previous generation are now all but forgotten, eclipsed by his fame and neglected by most historians.¹¹ ⁶ Valle to Pecchio, Guatemala City, 3 Apr. 1827, Cartas Autógrafas de y para José Cecilio del Valle (Mexico City, 1978), p. 146. ⁷ S. Collier, ‘Nationality, Nationalism, and Supra-nationalism in the Writings of Simon Bolívar’, Hispanic American Historical Review, 63 (1983), 37–64; J. Lynch, Simón Bolívar: A Life (New Haven London, 2006), pp. 213–17; F. D. Parker, ‘José Cecilio del Valle: Scholar and Patriot’, The Hispanic American Historical Review, 35 (1952), 516–39. ⁸ D. de Pradt, Congrès de Panama (Paris, 1825), p. 45. ⁹ C. Curcio, Europa, storia di un’idea, 2 vols (Florence, 1958); idem, Nazione, Europa, Umanità: Saggi sulla storia dell’idea di nazione e del principio di nazionalità in Italia (Milan, 1950); F. Chabod, Storia dell’idea d’Europa (Bari, 1961). ¹⁰ S. Mastellone, Il progetto politico di Mazzini (Italia-Europa) (Florence, 1994), p. 234. ¹¹ On Mazzini’s criticism of both the Carboneria and Freemasonry, see Mastellone, Il progetto politico, pp. 44–5. On the cosmopolitanism of the revolutiorary period see L. Lotti and R. Villari (eds), Universalismo e nazionalità nell’esperienza del giacobinismo italiano (Rome and Bari, 2003).


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Mazzini dismissed the Carbonari’s political beliefs as obsolete, and accused them of failing to appreciate the importance of the nation as the foundation of a new political order, dismissing their cosmopolitanism on the grounds that it was based on a ‘superficial observation of some foreign countries’ which served to undermine their notion of nationality.¹² Mazzini did not simply reject the Carboneria’s revolutionary strategies, but also claimed to have a profoundly different understanding of the question of nationality. He condemned the Carbonari for what he saw as their excessively vague and cosmopolitan ideal of liberty, one inspired by an ill-defined sympathy for other countries. However, the arguments and themes adopted by the exiles when discussing Italy’s emancipation in a global framework anticipated in many ways those of Mazzini himself, and may be seen as the foundation of the Risorgimento’s ‘cosmopolitanism of the nations’. Indeed, one of the key features of the ideology of the Italian secret societies, which emerged during the Napoleonic period, was the universalism of their principles. The Carbonari had in part inherited this outlook from eighteenthcentury Freemasons, since most of them belonged both to Masonic lodges and to the Carboneria. Their commitment to the spreading of universal freedom went hand in hand with their philanthropic and humanitarian conviction that the world was ‘the patria of humankind’.¹³ At the same time, concepts of European patriotism were occasionally invoked in the statutes of the secret societies, where they provided a framework for the discussion of Italian freedom.¹⁴ These ideals survived in the world of the secret societies well into the 1830s, for example in Filippo Buonarroti’s Charbonnerie démocratique universelle, the name itself clearly indicating the universal aspirations informing the revolutionary activities of its founder.¹⁵ However, the terms ‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘cosmopolitanism’ had become increasingly discredited since the end of the eighteenth century. The concept came to be associated with a preference for, and an allegiance to, the entire world over one’s own patria, a form of attachment to universality transcending allegiances to any particular city or country. This form of Enlightenment cosmopolitanism was undoubtedly becoming unpopular in the early nineteenth century among most European patriots and liberals.¹⁶ As I shall demonstrate, when it was used in the post-revolutionary period (and indeed it was occasionally ¹² Mazzini, Ricordi autobiografici, ed. M. Menghini (Imola, 1938), p. 58. ¹³ On Freemasonry, G. Giarrizzo, Massoneria e illuminismo nell’Europa del Settecento (Venice, 1994). ¹⁴ G. Gabrieli, Massoneria e carboneria nel regno di Napoli (Rome, 1982). ¹⁵ On Buonarroti see A. Saitta, Filippo Buonarroti: contributi alla Storia della sua vita e al suo pensiero, 2 vols (Rome, 1950), I, pp.139–54. On the relationship between Carboneria and Freemasonry in the period, see G. Leti, Carboneria e massoneria nel Risorgimento Italiano (Genova, 1925). ¹⁶ For the Italian case see Isabella, ‘Exile and Nationalism: the Case of the Risorgimento,’ European History Quarterly 36 (2006), pp. 496–7; for England G. Varouxakis, ‘ ‘‘Patriotism’’, ‘‘Cosmopolitanism’’ and Humanity in Victorian Political Thought’, European Journal of Political Theory, 5 (2006), 100–18; for Greece see C. Coumarianou, ‘Cosmopolitisme et Hellénisme dans

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employed by the exiles) it was always in association with the idea of a closer union among peoples or patrie, and not solely as an undefined allegiance to humankind.

C I V I L I Z AT I O N A S A G LO B A L PH E N O M E N O N What provided this generation of patriots with a unitary framework for the discussion of the relations between different nations, was the understanding of civilization as a phenomenon to which all peoples and societies belonged. Along with many other contemporary Neapolitan and Lombard intellectuals, in his formulation of the idea of civilization, Francesco Salfi combined GianBattista Vico’s metaphysical laws regulating the life of nations in history with French idéologie and the Enlightenment idea of perfectibility. What the Scienza Nuova taught Salfi and his contemporaries was that the historical development of humankind was profoundly unitary: since history was universal history, nations were governed by the same laws.¹⁷ Vico provided a theory of civilization that took into consideration political institutions, religion, literature, and culture in general within a historical framework regulated by universal rules. The interpretation of Vico upheld by Neapolitan intellectuals like Salfi and the Lombard journalists of the Conciliatore dismissed the idea that historical decadence was capable of wiping out completely all the previous achievement of human civilization, and that every period of ‘barbarity’ was similar to the previous one.¹⁸ It was precisely this interpretation that Pecchio had in mind in his Dissertazione sino a qual punto le produzioni scientifiche e letterarie seguano le leggi economiche della produzione in generale (1832), in which he proposed a model of civilization that coupled economic with cultural exchange. In fact, Pecchio rejected the theory of the human spirit as a ‘sort of wheel that, having reached the top, has to descend and reach the very bottom before it can rise once more’, because ‘in the nations the weariness of old age does not exist’ and new generations would produce a lasting vigour and youth. Pecchio highlighted the fact that literature, like any other element contributing to civilization, was the sum of many different influences added together.¹⁹ The exiles combined this Vichian understanding of civilization with ideas drawn from French industrialist discourse. In particular they were influenced by le ‘‘Mercure Savant’’, première revue grecque 1811–1821’, Proceedings of the IVth Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association ( The Hague and Paris, 1966), pp. 601–8. ¹⁷ S. Moravia, ‘Vichismo e idéologie nella filosofia Italiana dell’età napoleonica’, in idem, Filosofia e scienze umane nell’età dei lumi (Naples, 1982), pp. 308–54. ¹⁸ Moravia, ‘Vichismo e idéologie’, pp. 313–21, 333–7, 346–52. ¹⁹ Republished as Pecchio, Della produzione letteraria, ed. F. Cossutta (Pordenone, 1985), pp. 5–6, 104.


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the views of the Parisian Revue encyclopédique, whose director, Marc-Antoine Jullien, was a friend of many of them. The Revue viewed commerce and ‘industrie’ as forces already transforming the way in which different regions, countries, and continents related to each other, Europe as the driving force behind this process and France as the leader.²⁰ Drawing on his ideas, Francesco Salfi, who contributed many articles to the Revue between 1819 and his death in 1832, wrote that a distinctive feature of our century was ‘the reciprocal tendency, that the most civilized nations show to enter into contact with each other’.²¹ Like Salfi, Claudio Linati was convinced that these processes were further enhanced by the liberalization of trade between Europe and Latin America resulting from the independence of the former Spanish colonies. In the second volume of the periodical El Iris Linati lauded cultural and economic cosmopolitanism. For Linati, progress and commercialization had already affected the New World. Since the introduction of the steam-boat had encouraged transport, ‘useful discoveries’ and technological improvements had been disseminated, thus spreading enlightenment and overcoming ignorance. In Linati’s view this phenomenon of economic and intellectual globalization had actually transformed the earth into ‘one single point, a common homeland’ (‘una patria comune’), whose benefits were in turn shared by one and all.²² In his judgement, the encouragement of international exchanges would ultimately lead to an acceleration of the processes bringing national independence worldwide. The exiles’ cosmopolitan notion of civilization was not exclusively based on the free exchange of ideas and goods, but also on the belief that migration represented a positive, beneficial phenomenon for the global advancement of progress. In this, they were obviously also defending and justifying their own involvement in the political and economic life of their host countries, and in particular of the newly established countries of Latin America.²³ As Santangelo recalled after being expelled from Mexico, nation-building and civilization were processes arising out of cross-national exchanges, and neither the United States of America nor older European countries could have achieved political stability and prosperity without the contribution of foreigners.²⁴ While they believed that civilization was a universal process, and that all nations had equal rights to freedom, the exiles’ generation was not free of ethnocentrism. The civilizational discourse embraced by them, developed by combining Condorcet’s idea of progress and the Vichian idea of incivilimento, entailed the idea of European cultural superiority. It also accommodated in the same ²⁰ M.-A. Jullien, ‘Coup d’oeil sur les progrés des sciences, des lettres et des arts, en 1826’, Revue encyclopédique, 33 (1826), 1–14, at 1–2. On Jullien see E. Di Rienzo, Marc-Antoine Jullien de Paris (1789–1848): Una biografia politica (Naples, 1999). ²¹ F. Salfi, Saggio storico-critico della commedia italiana (Milan, 1829), pp. 7–8. ²² ‘Civilización’, El Iris, 2 (1826), 77. ²³ ‘Estrangeros’, El Iris, 2 (1826), 155–6. ²⁴ ‘Elections Mexicaines’, L’Abeille, 19 February 1833, p. 1.

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framework an argument in favour of the emancipation of the Americas and, among some exiles, the endorsement of the British presence in Asia, on the grounds that, while some peoples were ready to enjoy emancipation, others were better placed to enjoy fundamental freedoms under paternalistic government, and that there was a crucial distinction to be made between despotic and civilizing empires.²⁵ At the same time, however, they were convinced that, quintessentially European though it perhaps was, civilization could no longer be dissociated from constitutional freedoms and national emancipation, a line supported also by the Revue encyclopédique. European civilization was such in so far as it combined commerce, cultural exchanges, and constitutional freedoms. Without constitutional freedoms a polity, even if European, could not be regarded as fully civilized. This argument was provocatively employed by Alfio Grassi, who condemned any form of imperial and despotic government in the Mediterranean, and argued for the superiority of the Ottoman Empire over the British, Russian, and Austrian Empires in complying with the rule of law and adopting constitutional guarantees over the peoples it ruled.²⁶ Finally, even civilizing empires could not prevent nations from eventually achieving independence, as self-government was a right all people were ultimately entitled to enjoy. A polarity was thus established between empires, economic and intellectual stagnation, and authoritarian rule on one side, and nation-states, free trade, patriotism, and progress on the other. The attainment of independence by new nations represented a step towards the universal emancipation of the peoples. The spread of universal freedom and national emancipation were thus two aspects of the same processes leading to the emancipation of humankind. In a sketch which resembled Marc-Antoine Jullien’s comparative assessment of worldwide intellectual and industrial activities in the Revue encyclopédique, Linati contrasted the stationary system of empires like the Austrian and the Russian with the revolutionary movements then disrupting vast sections of the world.²⁷ For the exiles the clash between civilization as a constitutional movement and its enemies was also a fight against fanaticism and the Catholic Church.²⁸ Despite Mazzini’s contempt for their ‘cosmopolitanism’, his own understanding of the international dimension of freedom owed much to the debates expounded here. In his early writings, echoing the reinterpretation advanced by Lombard and Neapolitan intellectuals like Salfi, Mazzini typically combined ²⁵ See, for instance, F. Romeo, Letters to the Marquis of Hastings on the Indian press: with an appeal to reason and the British Parliament on the liberty of the press in general (London, 1824). ²⁶ Grassi, Charte Turque, ou organisation religieuse, civile et militare del’Empire Ottoman: suivie de quelques réflexions sur la guerre des grecs contre les turcs, 2 vols (Paris, 1825); idem, La Sainte Alliance, Les Anglais et Les Jésuites; Leur systéme politique a` l’égard de la Grèce, des gouvernemens constitutionels et des événemens actuels (Paris, 1827). ²⁷ C. Linati, Revue Trimestrielle Historique, 1 (1829), 220–2. ²⁸ Dei futuri destini dell’Europa dell’Autore della Rivista Politica d’Europa nel 1825, (Brussels, 1828), pp. 58, 106; it is attributed to Vitale Albera by F. Della Peruta (Mazzini e i rivoluzionari: Il partito d’azione 1830–1845 [Milan, 1974], p. 21, on the basis of archival material.


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praise for Vico’s cyclical vision of progress with Condorcet’s belief that civilization, ‘where force or division do not prevent it’, would constantly advance.²⁹ Drawing on the legacy of Lombard Romanticism, Mazzini dismissed the idea that the birth of a European literature would entail the destruction of national spirit, arguing that national independence and intellectual isolation should not be confused.³⁰ As Nadia Urbinati has argued, Mazzini viewed national emancipation as the precondition for the global dissemination of freedom and peace. This remained a central notion throughout the Risorgimento.³¹ While the Risorgimento produced several different types of cosmopolitan patriotism—including, for instance, the Christian universalism of moderates like Gioberti and Balbo—all patriots agreed on the compatibility between national emancipation and the universal spreading of individual freedoms.

R E - E S TA B L I S H I N G T H E B A L A N C E O F P OW E R I N E U RO PE After 1815 many exiled patriots developed a genuinely political conception of the European system. Their references to the global spreading of civilization were in fact combined with concrete and detailed criticism of the Congress system, and with alternative plans for managing international relations both within and beyond Europe. In order to challenge the Vienna settlement, the exiles relied upon Emmerick Vattel’s famous formulation of the idea of balance of power, the classic justification for the pre-revolutionary European model of international relations. In his Le Droit des gens of 1758, Vattel had claimed that Europe formed ‘a political system’ underpinned by the recognition of common principles and rights, whose ultimate goal was that of preventing any one country from gaining pre-eminence over the others; in eighteenth-century international politics, this was achieved by military alliances against those powers attempting to acquire an undue and excessive influence.³² Referring to the numerous editions of Le Droit des gens published both in France and England in the 1820s and 1830s, Eugenio Di Rienzo has written about a ‘Vattel Renaissance’ in Restoration Europe.³³ Indeed, the exiles’ ²⁹ Mazzini, D’una letteratura europea, in SEI, I, 177–222, pp. 177–8. ³⁰ Ibid., p. 215. ³¹ K. Nabulsi, ‘Patriotism and Internationalism in the ‘‘Oath of Allegiance’’ to Young Europe’, European Journal of Political Theory, 5 (2006), 61–70; N. Urbinati, ‘The Legacy of Kant: Giuseppe Mazzini’s Cosmopolitanism of Nations’, in C. A. Bayly and E. Biagini (eds), Giuseppe Mazzini and the Globalisation of Democratic Nationalism, 1830–1920 (Oxford, 2008), pp. 1–35. ³² On Vattel see R. Tuck, The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and the International Order From Grotius to Kant (Oxford, 1999), pp. 191–6. ³³ E. Di Rienzo, ‘Decadenza e caduta del cosmopolitismo: Francia/Europa, 1792–1848. Note per una ricerca’, in L. Bianchi (ed.), L’idea di cosmopolitismo: circolazione e metamorfosi (Naples, 2002), p. 449. For instance, Le Droit des gens, ou principes de la loi naturelle appliqués a` la conduite et aux

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publications bear witness to this revival of interest in Vattel’s theories, whom they refashioned as an advocate of a ‘liberal’ international order. In lamenting the unjust settlement imposed upon the Italians at Vienna, the former Jacobin Luigi Angeloni identified Vattel as having demonstrated the right of each nation to equal treatment, and having clearly shown the threat to peace represented by a great power, expansion of territory and influence.³⁴ For GianBattista Marochetti, the disruption of the European balance of power, initiated by Napoleon’s continental supremacy, had resulted in the establishment of the Holy Alliance’s European oligarchic system, a ‘dictatorship’ in which ‘second-class’ states like Piedmont, Bavaria, Naples, and Sweden were wholly excluded from making decisions.³⁵ That a limited number of powerful countries held sway over the smaller, weaker polities, thereby undermining their sovereignty, contravened another fundamental principle upheld by Vattel, namely, that all states enjoyed equal rights in the international order. Reference to Vattel was also made in the context of the exiles’ attacks on the Holy Alliance’s claimed right to intervene in other countries’ affairs. The principle of intervention first formulated at Troppau in 1820 to justify Austria’s determination to crush the Neapolitan revolution was the target of liberal outrage in the following years.³⁶ In his Difesa dei Piemontesi inquisiti a causa degli avvenimenti del 1821, Alerino Palma, quoting Vattel, upheld a people’s right to rise up against a despotic government or absolute king, and to request assistance from a foreign power, with military support to a nation under tyrannical rule being an act of justice.³⁷ Palma’s text is but one of many in which Vattel was used by the exiles not only to challenge the principle of intervention formulated by the Congress system after 1815, but also to advocate its replacement with a new principle, one according with the beliefs of nations disposed to help each other in the name of solidarity and brotherhood. For instance, for Palma it was on the basis of this new principle of intervention that Greece had lawfully requested the support of the European states against despotism. Others employed similar arguments to condemn the French invasion of Spain in 1823 or, as early as 1821, to request the Spanish constitutional government’s army to intervene in Naples in order to save the revolution.³⁸ The earliest advocates of the principle of counter-intervention, according to recent historical scholarship, were either French liberals like Carrel and Lafayette, who urged the French government affaires des nations et des souverains, par M. de Vattel (Paris, 1820), republished in 1822, 1830, and 1839. ³⁴ Angeloni, Dell’Italia uscente il settembre del 1818. Ragionamenti IV, 2 vols (Paris, 1818), II, pp. 92, 169. ³⁵ G. B. Marochetti, Indépendance de l’Italie (Paris, 1830), p. 88. ³⁶ Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics, pp. 610–11. ³⁷ Palma, Difesa dei Piemontesi inquisiti a causa degli avvenimenti del 1821, con un’invocazione ai ministri costituzionali del Conte Alerino Palma già magistrato in Piemonte (Brussels, 1829), p. 78. ³⁸ On the case of Naples see Spini, Mito e realtà della Spagna nelle rivoluzioni italiane del 1820–21 (Rome, 1950).


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after July 1830 to intervene in favour of the Italian revolutions, or Mazzini himself.³⁹ The exiles’ writings and letters suggest, however, that such ideas were already current in the first years of the Restoration, and discussed at length by then.⁴⁰ The rise of nationalism in the nineteenth century was accompanied by an almost universal preference for great versus small countries, the argument being that processes of unification or expansion into larger units represented the necessary destiny of any national movement. Most nineteenth-century British and European liberal thinkers endorsed this idea, convinced as they were that the survival of modern states in the international order could be guaranteed only by means of viable territorial units.⁴¹ This of course also applied to the case of early Italian patriotism. The creation of a single federal state entity in the Italian peninsula was advanced by the pre-Mazzinian patriots on the grounds that it would be beneficial to the European balance of power, as Italy could then act as a buffer zone between France and the Habsburg Empire, a role that only a country of some size could fulfil.⁴² As Marochetti observed, ‘while all states have tended, especially in the last three centuries, to [. . .] agglomerate, and to merge in great homogeneous and compact masses, Italy alone remains stationary and decomposed in small fractions . . .’⁴³ At the same time, early Italian liberals associated their critique of the Congress system established by the Holy Alliance with the vindication of the rights of the smaller and weaker European states, such as those then existing in Italy, to choose their own future and to survive in an international environment respectful of their rights. This defence of the role of small countries in the international system was at least partially indebted to the political thought of the Enlightenment, of which Montesquieu and Rousseau were perhaps in recent times the most prominent, but not the only representatives. These philosophers praised small republics as models of civil ethics. While they acknowledged that the survival of small states was difficult, and could only be attained with the defence of ³⁹ G. Varouxakis, Mill on Nationality (London and New York, 2002), pp. 78–84; J. Jennings, ‘Nationalist Ideas in the Early Years of the July Monarchy: Armand Carrel and Le National’, History of Political Thought, 12 (1991), 497–514. ⁴⁰ Palma and Marochetti certainly discussed these issues among each other in Paris, as documented by French Police reports. See A. Palma, Paris, 2 Sept. 1828, Prefecture de Police, ANP, F.7 (Police générale), 6654. ⁴¹ E. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 32–3; on the preference for large countries in Victorian thought see G. Varouxakis, ‘ ‘‘Great’’ versus ‘‘Small’’ Nations: Size and National Greatness in Victorian Political thought’, in D. Bell (ed.), Victorian Visions of Global Order: Empire and International Relations in Nineteenth Century British Political Thought (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 136–58. ⁴² See, for instance, A. Panizzi, ‘Prospects of the Holy Alliance - Stability of the French Government’, Edinburgh Review, 40 (1824), 514–42; Marochetti, Indépendance de l’Italie, p. x; Pecchio, Catechismo Italiano ad uso delle scuole, dei caffè, delle botteghe, taverne, bettole e bettolini ed anche del casino dei nobili e semminarj (Lugano, 1830), in SP, p. 557. ⁴³ Marochetti, Indépendance de l’Italie, pp. 57–8. On the role of an independent Italy in the European balance of power see idem, p. 39.

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their status as neutral countries or in the context of federations, their role in the international system was valued for the contribution their higher standards of political life could bring towards a more stable and peaceful order.⁴⁴ This concern for the survival of the small European republics reflected the historical rise of commercial monarchies in Europe, whose influence represented, especially in the second half of the eighteenth century, a potential threat to the existence of republican states, obliged to commit to neutrality and hope for the benign attitude or the de facto protection of the greater states.⁴⁵ It was Ugo Foscolo who mounted the most passionate case in favour of the smaller, weaker countries, and who protested at the arrogant treatment they had suffered at the hands of the great powers in recent years. Foscolo was right to observe that before the French Revolution the Italian states had, by and large, managed to stay outside conflicts by choosing to remain neutral, and that their status had been respected by the European powers.⁴⁶ In his interpretation the destruction of the principles governing the international order had not started with the Congress of Vienna, but soon after the French Revolution. The events surrounding the tragic and bloody end of the Neapolitan Republic in 1799 demonstrated the fateful breach of all the principles of the law of the nations on the part of both Britain and Revolutionary France, and in particular of the right to remain outside international conflicts. According to Foscolo, the King of the Two Sicilies, as well as the Grand Duke of Tuscany, had been forced to give up their neutrality and to take part in wars they had not chosen to fight.⁴⁷ Lord Nelson’s direct involvement in the decisions leading to the repression of the Neapolitan revolution and the execution of its leaders marked, in Foscolo’s view, the beginning of a new era of foreign interference in the domestic policies of the weaker states of Europe, which had subsequently come within the sphere of influence of the European powers, intent upon guaranteeing their own pre-eminent status on the continent.⁴⁸ As Eugenio Biagini has recently noted, Foscolo entertained a vision of international relations based on Hobbesian anthropology.⁴⁹ This is apparent ⁴⁴ Di Rienzo, ‘Piccoli Stati, piccole patrie: dall’antico Regime alla Rivoluzione. Tra storia e storiografia’, Filosofia Politica, 15 (2001), 399–410; M. Bazzoli, Il piccolo stato nell’età moderna (Milan, 1990). ⁴⁵ F. Venturi, Utopia e riforma nell’ Illuminismo ( Turin, 1970). ⁴⁶ On the neutrality of the Italian states in the eighteenth century see F. Venturi, Da Muratori a Beccaria, in Settecento Riformatore, 5 vols ( Turin, 1969–90), i, pp. 272–354. ⁴⁷ Foscolo, ‘An Account of the Revolution in Naples of 1798–1799’, New Monthly Magazine [1821], now in EN, 13, II, 3–45; quotation from p. 13. ⁴⁸ Ibid., pp. 44–5. ⁴⁹ E. Biagini, ‘Liberty, Class and Nation-Building: Ugo Foscolo’s ‘‘English’’ Constitutional Thought, 1816–1827’, European Journal of Political Theory, 5 (2006), 34–49. On earlier Hobbesian influences on Foscolo see L. Salvatorelli, Il pensiero politico italiano dal 1700 al 1870 [1935] ( Turin, 1975), pp. 151–2, where the Italian historian highlights the presence of Hobbesian themes in Foscolo’s writings as early as 1809.


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in the pessimistic tone of the pages he devoted to the behaviour of states towards each other. Sketching a history of relations among nations in his Narrative of the Events of Parga, Foscolo observed that states, like men, had an innate desire for usurpation, and that the natural state of nations was war. Indeed, wrote Foscolo, ‘the only tribunal of the nations is the field of battle’.⁵⁰ It was not any principle of equity, but rather the self-interest of nations, whose conflicts could never result in the mastery of one party over the others, which drove them to accept certain principles of international law.⁵¹ For Foscolo international law had thus not been an achievement of antiquity, but rather of modern times, and in particular of the sixteenth century, when ‘all the great powers being mutually restrained from usurpation over the smaller, they respectively became guarantees for the security of every independent country’.⁵² Mazzini was well aware of the exiles’ views of the Vienna settlement, and his criticism of the post-1815 European order reflected his familiarity with these earlier debates. He, too, viewed the Congress of Vienna as the destruction of the system established at the Treaty of Westphalia, which ‘turned into law a system of balance and, as the diplomats say, of counter-force which gave hope for help to the weak states under threat’. His Holy Alliance of the Peoples was thus an alternative to the Holy Alliance, and one which would seal a pact among nations against their oppressors, and guarantee the right of nations to intervene in defence of other peoples’ freedom.⁵³ Mazzini, however, was not convinced that a return to the balance of power would be sufficient to bring peace back to Europe. Indeed, as he made clear in 1836 in his De la nationalité, the pre-revolutionary system founded with the Treaty of Westphalia suffered from chronic instability, not least because the ‘Jus Publicum Europeum’ founded in 1648 had been based on the principle of monarchical legitimacy. Unlike the exiled Carbonari Mazzini believed that, without democracy, the recognition of the principle of nationality would not suffice. For Mazzini it was democracy that would eventually bring peace and establish a well-ordered system of international relations. Monarchies, even if constitutional, would always be tempted to return to the ‘old system’ and to undermine any bid to establish peace.⁵⁴ Among many, if not all, exiles it was instead commonplace to believe that republics were only feasible in the New World, as in Europe both the enduring influence of the aristocracies and the existence of ancient monarchies made the establishment of republics utopian. ⁵⁰ Foscolo, Narrative of Events Illustrating the Vicissitudes and the Cession of Parga [1820], EN, 13, I, p. 297. On Hobbes see C. Covell, Hobbes, Realism and the Tradition of International Law (Basingstoke and New York, 2004). ⁵¹ Foscolo, Narrative of Events, p. 298. ⁵² Foscolo, Narrative of Events, p. 304. ⁵³ La Santa Alleanza dei Popoli [1849], in SEI, 39, pp. 203–21. ⁵⁴ Mazzini, De la Nationalité [1836], SEI, 7, p. 342.

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Risorgimento in Exile TOWA R D S A K A N T I A N U N D E R S TA N D I N G O F T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L O R D E R

Critical as they were of the destruction of the system of the balance of power, the exiles did not believe that its reintroduction, along with the recognition of the principle of nationality and the introduction of constitutional freedom, constituted sufficient preconditions for peaceful coexistence. What emerges as an implicit conclusion from their discussions of the post-1815 settlement as expounded above is the belief that a genuine refoundation of international law and the construction of a novel global legal order were urgently needed if freedom and peace were to prevail. Drawing on the ideas of Saint-Simon, Thierry, and Jouffroy regarding the possibility of founding a ‘European Union’, many exiles were convinced that, once the Vienna settlement had been replaced with a Europe based on national sovereignty, peace and stability could be established once and for all. It is possible to detect the influence of Saint-Simon and Thierry’s De la réorganisation de la société européenne in Palma’s federal plan, which envisaged a European union fashioned according to the universal principles of the Christian Middle Ages: This is the only means of obtaining a real and long-lasting balance for Europe, which would thus form a great monarchical constitutional confederation as opposed to the republican confederation of America, a type of government for ever denied to Europe, owing to her excessive luxury, the glaring disparities in ownership and other reasons or to infinite abuses, which cannot be eradicated all at once [. . .] Ultimately, this is the only means by which the project of a Christian Republic, conceived by the great Henry after the Peace of Vervins and accepted by the main powers of Europe at the turn of the sixteenth century, can be implemented.⁵⁵

Palma believed that it would be France’s responsibility to lead Europe towards a future federal unity. More realistically than Mazzini, who was hostile to the idea of French supremacy in Europe and saw the European ideal as a means to affirm Italy’s mission, most exiles considered that Italian freedom could be achieved only with the backing of France. Although the old Jacobin and democrat Filippo Buonarroti, who was in Brussels when Palma published his work, dismissed the pamphlet as ‘inconclusive’, no doubt for its support given to the establishment of constitutional monarchies, many of the exiles would in fact have endorsed its spirit.⁵⁶ It should also be stressed that, as much as the refoundation of the balance of power and the creation of a new Europe based on national emancipation entailed an implicit condemnation of Napoleonic imperialism, the exiles were also convinced that the new Europe would not ⁵⁵ Difesa dei Piemontesi inquisiti, p. 104. ⁵⁶ Buonarroti to Luigi Angeloni, 9 August 1829, in M. Battistini, Esuli italiani in Belgio (1815–1861) (Florence, 1968), p. 215.


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be possible without pre-existing Napoleonic reforms. The institutions and the legislative frameworks of European countries had been, after all, moulded by Napoleonic rule.⁵⁷ Admittedly, in many cases the legal dimension of such a European federalism remained ill-defined, and the idea of European unity simply pointed to the close ties that nations sharing similar political principles might form. Yet a striking feature of the exiles’ discussions is precisely their reference to the establishment of such a legal framework. For this concern they owed much to a first-hand knowledge of Immanuel Kant’s oeuvre. While Mazzini was not well versed in Kantian philosophy, the earlier exiles’ writings betray some familiarity with Kant’s vision of international relations, and in particular with his idea that a universally recognized international legal framework, a binding pact among nations which would however not limit their sovereignty, was needed to lay the foundations for a peaceful coexistence among federated nations.⁵⁸ At times closely following the arguments of the Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose, in a pamphlet addressed to the Greek youth in the aftermath of Greek independence, Alerino Palma claimed that the instability of international relations was due to the fact that the stronger nations had imposed their will on the weaker, without any supreme authority existing to settle controversies between them. Endorsing the ancient Greek model of the Amphictyonies, institutions aimed at resolving disputes between the city-states, he regretted that since their creation to protect the temple of Demeter no legal framework had regulated international relations. What is remarkable about this short pamphlet is Palma’s view that the lack of any international legal framework contradicted the very essence of western liberty, represented by the rule of law, which he described as the opposite of ‘the pashas’ arbitry.’⁵⁹ Palma’s preoccupation with international law also induced him to publish a short introduction to the principles of neutrality in maritime law, which he hoped would provide the Greek revolutionaries with useful guidance as they strove to maintain their commercial engagements in the middle of an international diplomatic and military crisis.⁶⁰ ⁵⁷ See, for instance, G. Crivelli, Pensées politiques et considérations sur les institutions de l’empire français (Brussels, 1827). ⁵⁸ S. Goyard-Favre, ‘Le Thème fédéraliste et son evolution dans la conception kantienne de la paix’, in L. Bianchi and A. Postigliola (eds), Un progetto filosofico della modernità: Per la pace perpetua di Immanuel Kant (Naples, 2000), pp. 151–72. ⁵⁹ Palma, Political Cathechism to the Greek Youth (Hydra, 1826), pp. 28–31. See I. Kant, ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose [1784]’, in H. Reiss and H. B. Nisbet (eds), Kant’s Political Writings (Cambridge, 1970), p. 75, where the German philosopher advocates a Foedus Amphictyonum to protect equally small and big states. Also Mirabeau, Benjamin Franklin, and James Madison made reference to the Amphictyonum when proposing their confederal plans. On the Anphictyonic Council as a model of international relations see A. Pagden, Lords of all the Worlds: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France, c.1500-C.1800 (New Haven and London, 1995), pp. 1878. ⁶⁰ See Palma, Collection of the Principles of the Original Right of Nations Deriving from the European Treaty Regarding Sea-Booties and Neutrality (Hydra, 1826).

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The idea of resolving conflicts and preventing wars led some exiles to imagine the establishment of supranational institutions. Marochetti, drawing on eighteenth-century cosmopolitan plans, from Saint-Pierre to Kant, proposed to summon a congress, or a ‘congrès oecuménique’, in which deputies representing each nation would discuss dissensions among European countries, and decide on the basis of majority voting, but without interfering in their internal affairs. He suggested that all the sovereigns might also gather as a ‘suprême jury cosmopolite’ to maintain peace and the balance of power. Marochetti’s ultimate wish, however, was to realize an even more ambitious and, as he admitted, perhaps utopian plan, which had a distinctively Kantian flavour, that of overturning the current Congress system and laying the foundations of a new international law.⁶¹ On the eve of the Congress of Panama in 1826, many Italians hoped that a Pan-American federation would be established, creating an ‘American system’ independent of the colonial powers. Exiles like Orazio Santangelo, Fiorenzo Galli, and Pecchio imagined that an era of large-scale federations, as much in the Americas as in Europe, was looming, and that Panama was the first step towards the establishment of a global federal system of nations united by international law and commerce, led by American and European Federations.⁶² For a moment, their utopian belief in the creation of a global federal order seemed to be on the brink of being realized.

C O N C LU S I O N S The cosmopolitanism of the exiles was ‘a cosmopolitanism of the nations’, based on the idea of freedom as the foundation of national and international life, and of a national emancipation which would help to create a permanent peace. In Marochetti’s words, the goal was a ‘Holy Alliance of the Peoples, a philanthropic and cosmopolitan alliance’ founded on universal brotherhood, and thus superior to the exclusive and narrow patriotism of the ancients.⁶³ Thus they were ‘rooted cosmopolitans’, since they were at one and the same time attached to their own patria and respectful of different political and cultural identities which advanced the universal values of individual freedom and tolerance. In this respect, ⁶¹ Marochetti, Indépendance de l’Italie, pp. 87–9 (quotation from p. 92). On eighteenth-century cosmopolitan plans see D. Archibugi and F. Voltaggio, ‘Dai progetti per la pace perpetua ad un modello cosmopolitico di relazioni internazionali’, in idem (eds), Filosofi per la pace (Rome, 1991), pp. xi-lxviii. ⁶² Pecchio, ‘Guatemala’, part II, New Monthly Magazine, 16 (1826), p. 74. O. Santangelo, Las cuatro primeras discusiones del Congreso de Panamá tales como debieren ser (Mexico, 1826), pp. 138–9; Galli, ‘America y Europa’, El Iris, 2 (1826), p. 65. ⁶³ Marochetti, L’Italie ce qu’elle doit faire pour figurer enfin parmi les nations indépendantes et libres (Paris, 1837), p. 141.


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their patriotism, cosmopolitanism, and liberalism could be reconciled.⁶⁴ Their support for a federated Europe was consistent with French liberal ideals, and in fact did not challenge the notion of French supremacy on the continent; to the contrary they viewed French leadership, and Italy’s participation, as a guarantee of the consolidation of their patria as a newly independent and free system of federated states. While they generally associated the idea of nation with a cultural and linguistic identity surviving from the past—as they made abundantly clear, when endorsing, for instance, Claude Fauriel’s research into the ancient popular traditions of Greece—their ideas of patria or patrie owed an overwhelming debt to the civic humanist tradition. Although the Romantic exiles agreed with Herder as to the propensity of national identities to survive through history, and in the case both of Italy and Greece valued the individuality of their linguistic and literary traditions, they were also firmly persuaded that what would make Italians citizens of their patria was first and foremost their belonging to the same political community. They implicitly admitted the ‘artificiality’ of the process of nation-building, but justified it on the basis of the vital need to ensure political freedom and universal rights. That the political dimension preceded the cultural, or even the linguistic one, is demonstrated in a striking way by, for instance, a pamphlet published anonymously by the Milanese lawyer Vitale Albera, in the 1820s, when in exile by turns in Geneva and Brussels. In his Dei futuri destini dell’Europa (1828) Albera claimed that, in an age of proliferating contacts between nations and increasing cultural exchanges, linguistic divisions as a source of identity and as barriers to communication were in fact losing importance. The newly established Latin American republics were proof enough that linguistic homogeneity in a continent did not preclude the birth of separate nations. For Albera ‘the principle of keeping one language to the exclusion of all the others belongs to the times of hostility and political intolerance’, convinced as he was that ‘each and every national spirit stems from the people’s governments, and from their institutions’.⁶⁵ Advocating a model of cosmopolitan patriotism which was multicultural in spirit, Albera’s views bear some resemblance to the Greek patriotism of Rhigas Velestinlis (1798), whose model of citizenship rejected any notion of cultural and linguistic chauvinism.⁶⁶ Indeed, concepts of Italian nationhood elaborated by this generation of patriots rarely presupposed a unified Italian state covering the entire peninsula. Santangelo, who promoted the 1821 revolution in Naples and then joined the liberals in Spain, claimed that in Italy there were not one, but many nations.⁶⁷ ⁶⁴ K. A. Appiah, ‘Cosmopolitan Patriots’, in P. Cheah and B. Robbins (eds), Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling beyond the Nation (Minneapolis, 1998), pp. 91–114, at pp.106–7. ⁶⁵ Dei futuri destini dell’Europa, pp. 123–4. ⁶⁶ On Rhigas see P. Kitromilides, ‘An Enlightenment Perspective on Balkan Cultural Pluralism: The Republican Vision of Rhigas Velestinlis’, History of Political Thought, 24 (2003), 465–79. ⁶⁷ Santangelo, Las cuatro primeras, p. 46.

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The Neapolitan exiles in fact considered the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies to be their primary patria, and many former supporters of the Napoleonic regime in northern Italy likewise could not conceive of an Italian nation extending beyond the borders of the former Napoleonic Kingdom. No doubt this was one of the reasons why Mazzini considered this generation’s idea of nationhood to be inadequate and vague. However, the relationship between nations conceived by them was the creed shared also by Mazzini and his followers, and by later Risorgimento patriots in general. The cosmopolitan patriotism of the Romantics, itself a reworking of themes first conceived by the Italian Jacobins, can be seen to be at the root of this aspect of Risorgimento discourse. In addition, as was demonstrated above, Mazzini’s critique of the Congress system and his advocacy of the principle of counter-intervention were by no means original. Mazzini, however, had nothing whatsoever to say about international federations from a legal point of view, nor was he interested in supranational institutions until after 1848.⁶⁸ Indeed, his was an ethical cosmopolitanism, one in which peace and international stability would result from the virtue inherent in the domestic political life of the European nations once they were blessed with democratic and republican institutions. By contrast with Mazzini, the patriots discussed here, whether in the grip of a bleakly realist and pessimistic vision, as Foscolo was, or inspired, like Marochetti, by a utopian future of perpetual peace, were eager to elaborate a new set of principles in international relations, and therefore underpinned their European or international plans for peace with notions of international law and rights. From this point of view, the Carbonari were far closer to Kant than Mazzini himself, since they endorsed the Kantian principle that peace was to be based on juridical principles, and that federalism should be achieved by legal means.⁶⁹ This was the greatest achievement of their liberal vision of international relations, which rested on the need to link freedom to law both in internal and in external affairs. As GianBattista Marochetti wrote in 1837, criticizing Mazzini’s belief in the superiority of the ideas of the younger revolutionaries of Giovine Italia over those of the patriots born before 1800, his own was the generation of ‘libéraux cosmopolites’.⁷⁰ ⁶⁸ Although the Kantian dimension of the exiles’ cosmopolitan patriotism was temporarily lost, it did not disappear from Risorgimento debates: it later resurfaced, for instance, in works like Terenzio Mamiani’s D’un nuovo diritto europeo ( Turin, 1859). ⁶⁹ Goyard-Favre, ‘Le thème fédéraliste’, p. 170. ⁷⁰ Marochetti, L’Italie, p. 240.

PART II E N G L A N D A N D I TA LY C O M PA R E D


6 English Institutions and Italian Freedom I N T RO D U C T I O N As Lucien Jaume has noted, between the French Revolution and the end of the nineteenth century, ‘every generation of liberals tried to derive instruction from the other side of the English Channel, although neither the power structure nor the social structure could be exported’.¹ Throughout the Restoration period interest in English freedom stemmed primarily from the liberals’ search for a political model which, in opposition to the arbitrary governments of democracy and of individual dictatorship experienced during the French Revolution and with the Napoleonic regime, would protect freedom and secure political stability, thus ensuring social peace along with the interests of the privileged classes. England seemed to embody admirably this combination of progress, freedom, and social order that continental liberals were hoping to guarantee after the cataclysm of the previous decades.² On the continent, French intellectuals produced the most complex meditations about the English political model, whose history provided them also with a source of reflection on the recent revolutionary events and the political future awaiting France. Did France, after the Restoration, require its own Glorious Revolution, since the Bourbons were no less reactionary than the Stuarts, and did English history teach that only if liberty were safeguarded could the monarchy survive?³ For a minority of them, the so-called aristocratic liberals and ultras like René de Chateaubriand or Charles Cottu, admiration for England stemmed from the belief that only a strong national aristocracy, as an intermediary body between people and government, could preserve and protect freedom. In order to re-establish aristocratic political and social supremacy in France, they believed it was necessary to recreate a territorial aristocracy, which they considered to be the only tenable bulwark against despotism. To this ¹ L. Jaume, L’individu éffacé ou le paradoxe du libéralisme français (Paris, 1997), p. 283. ² Like most continental observers, the Italian exiles almost invariably used the term ‘England’ and ‘English’ even when they referred to the whole of Britain, as Scotland was simply ignored. In the next two chapters, I shall follow as a rule their own usage. ³ G. Cubitt, ‘The Political Uses of Seventeenth-Century English History in Bourbon Restoration France’, Historical Journal, 50 (2007), 73–95; idem, ‘Revolution, Reaction, Restoration: The Meanings and Uses of Seventeenth-Century English History in the Political Thinking of Benjamin Constant, c.1797–1830’, European Review of History, 14 (2007), 21–47.

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end, in 1826 Anglophile royalists like Charles Cottu campaigned for the full reintroduction of the law of primogeniture in France.⁴ Likewise, further to the left were French conservatives who drew inspiration from England. In the English aristocracy French doctrinaires such as Auguste de Staël, Prosper Duvergier de Hauranne, François Guizot, and Prosper de Barante admired a body committed to the well-being of the nation, which they contrasted with the French feudal nobility, solely concerned with its own interests, and incapable of producing a satisfactory national elite.⁵ As Mme de Staël had earlier observed, the exceptional virtues of the English aristocracy resulted from its ability to combine grandeur and antiquity with merit and talent. These were the qualities the doctrinaires believed to be necessary to establish a French peerage truly dedicated to the common good.⁶ In spite of its social inequalities and imperfect institutions, England boasted the existence of a genuine social mobility which opened careers to any talent; democracy thrived while the aristocracy gave the lead.⁷ Auguste de Staël claimed that in the English case aristocratic influence through elections, love of hierarchy, and honours were combined with the existence of genuine examples of democratic life. What the doctrinaires admired in England was a political system which, in contrast to the Napoleonic centralized state, was based on the self-government of the communes. They also sympathized with a parliamentary system which ensured a representation of interests according to their effective importance in society, rather than on the abstract idea of popular representation.⁸ Not universal suffrage, but public opinion would facilitate the involvement and influence of the general population in the political life of the country.⁹ At the same time, however, the Anglophilia of the doctrinaires, unlike that of the ultras, did not go hand in hand with a nostalgia for the ancien régime, a rejection of all the Napoleonic reforms, and a propensity to undermine parliamentary government. Admiration for the English aristocracy therefore did not prevent Auguste de Staël from defending existing French inheritance law in ⁴ A. de Dijn, ‘Aristocratic Liberalism in Post-Revolutionary France’, Historical Journal, 48 (2005), 661–81. ⁵ Jaume, L’individu éffacé, pp. 288–311; P. Rosanvallon, Le moment Guizot (Paris, 1985), pp. 107–20. ⁶ Mme de Staël, Considérations sur la Révolution Française [1818], ed. J. Godechot (Paris, 1983), pp. 584, 601. G. Kelly, ‘Liberalism and Aristocracy in the French Restoration’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 26 (1965), 509–530. On Mme de Staël and Italian liberals see I. Angrisani Guerrini, ‘Madame de Staël, gli Italiani e le Considérations sur la Révolution Française’ in Mélanges a` la mémoire de Franco Simone: France et Italie dans la culture européenne xix et xx siècles, 4 vols (Geneva, 1980–4). ⁷ E. de Waresquiel, ‘Quand les doctrinaires visitaient l’Angleterre au début du XIX siècle’, Commentaire, 18 (1994), 361–7. B. Yvert, ‘La pensée politique d’Auguste de Staël’, Annales Benjamin Constant, 17 (1995), 77–86. See P. Duvergier de Hauranne, Lettres sur les élections anglaises et sur la situation de l’Irlande (Paris, 1827), p. 150; P. de Barante, Des communes et de l’aristocratie (Paris, 1821). ⁸ A. Craiutu, Liberalism under Siege: The Political Thought of the French Doctrinaires, (Lanham, MD, 2003), pp. 192–3, 203–6. ⁹ Rosanvallon, Le moment Guizot, pp. 64–72.

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1826. De Staël, supported by the doctrinaires, argued that in France the division of land into small properties had not hampered agricultural production but, after the Revolution, had made land available to more industrious people and thus contributed to social peace.¹⁰ Geneva was another important centre of continental Anglophilia, and had been such since at least the 1790s, when Etienne Dumont had advocated the adoption of the English constitution to stabilize France in the aftermath of the Terror.¹¹ In the 1820s it was Sismondi, personally connected with progressive English political circles, who would continue this tradition. While critical of many aspects of the constitution, and sceptical about the plausibility of transposing English institutions to France, he lauded the role of public opinion in developing a ‘national education which daily summons the most numerous classes of the people to know, to understand the interests of their patria [. . .] and to manifest their will’.¹² The extent to which the Italian exiles were influenced and affected by these debates will be discussed in the present chapter. Indeed, exactly like many other continental liberals, they too used the English case to reflect upon the compatibility between freedom and social order. Whether through personal contacts in Paris, as was the case with Santorre di Santarosa, or simply because of their knowledge of French political literature, moderate exile liberalism was conversant with the views of French liberals about England. This was true also of those who were in a position to observe English society and its institutions at first hand. Besides an in-depth knowledge of French liberal culture, the exiles’ understanding of Britain was also affected by the debates on constitutional reform taking place in that country, and enhanced in some cases by direct access to the most socially exclusive and also intellectually sophisticated circles. After 1821 the Lombard and Piedmontese Romantic exiles were welcomed by the Whig aristocracy, and in particular at Holland House, the most cosmopolitan of the English aristocratic circles, either because of their earlier encounters with them in Italy, or at Coppet, or through Ugo Foscolo, who had been in contact with Lord Holland since his arrival in London in 1816.¹³ For intellectuals and aristocrats like Foscolo, Giuseppe Pecchio, Antonio ¹⁰ A. de Staël-Holstein, Letters on England (London, 1825), pp. 64–5, 69–70, 102–3. ¹¹ R. Whatmore, ‘Etienne Dumont, the British Constitution and the French Revolution’, Historical Journal, 50 (2007), 23–47. ¹² J. C. L. Sismondi, ‘Revue des efforts et des progrès des peuples dans les vingt-cinq dernières années’ [1825], in J. C. L. Sismondi, Studi e Ricerche, ed. U. Marcelli (Bologna, 1954), pp. 39–60, at p. 52. For his views on the English constitutions see F. Sofia, ‘Formes constitutionnelles et organisation de la société chez Sismondi’, in Jaume (ed.), Coppet, creuset de l’esprit libéral (Aix.en-Provence and Paris, 2000), pp. 72–3. Sismondi’s connection with British politics had been reinforced by his marriage to a sister-in-law of Sir James Mackintosh. ¹³ M. Isabella, ‘Il ‘‘Conciliatore’’ e l’Inghilterra’, in G. Barbarisi and A. Cadioli (eds), Idee e Figure del ‘Conciliatore’ (Milan, 2004), pp. 477–507. On Coppet and the Whig Aristocracy see N. King, ‘ ‘‘ The airy form of things forgotten’’: Madame de Staël, l’utilitarisme et l’impulsion

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Panizzi, Santorre di Santarosa, Ferdinando Dal Pozzo and Giovanni Arrivabene, attendance at Holland House enabled them to meet Edinburgh Reviewers such as Sydney Smith, William Empson, and Francis Jeffrey, historians like Thomas Babington Macaulay and Henry Hallam, many Spanish exiles, intellectuals and Italophiles like Charles Macfarlane and Stewart Rose, and the most prominent foreigners visiting London.¹⁴ Access to the intelligentsia was also provided by Lord Lansdowne, whose circle at Bowood included the Benthamites and the political economists.¹⁵ Indeed, whether thanks to their contact with John Bowring or through Sarah Austin, the wife of the legal reformer John Austin, they also gained access to Bentham’s set.¹⁶ However, as I shall demonstrate, given the social background and the political inclinations of the majority of them, rather than Benthamite radicalism it was the language and ideas of the philosophic Whigs and Holland House they found more congenial when commenting on the English polity. The exiled aristocratic exiles would seem to have had no time at all for Bentham’s republicanism and advocacy of universal suffrage. While Holland House upheld the Foxite Whig tradition, which was identified with the defence of English liberties against despotism, and with humanitarian causes such as the anti-slavery campaign, it was philosophical Whiggism that provided the most sophisticated tools for those wishing to promote a gradual reform of the constitution, and to justify the Reform Bill. To philosophical Whigs such as Sir James Mackintosh, Henry Hallam, Macaulay, and the Edinburgh Reviewers, society was an organism rooted in historical development. They therefore opposed the radicals’ notion of society as a mechanism, and condemned universal suffrage and abstract theories of legal and institutional reform. In the case of Mackintosh, however, this philosophical framework could accommodate an explanation of, and a justification for, the French Revolution. Thanks to their adoption of the Scottish Enlightenment’s stadial theory, which accounted for the gradual rise and development of commercial societies, Mackintosh and his associates could justify the need for political and legal reform not in terms of the existence of universal and libérale’, Cahiers Staëliens, 11 (1970), 5–26, A. Ferraris, Ludovico di Breme. Le avventure dell’utopia (Florence, 1981), pp. 101–21. ¹⁴ For an enthusiastic account of Holland House by an Italian guest see Sigismondo Trechi to Lord Holland, Milan, 19 April 1824, BL, Holland House Papers, 51832. ¹⁵ On the Italian exiles and their contacts with the English aristocracy see M. Wicks, The Italian Exiles in London 1816–1848, (Manchester, 1937); C. P. Brand, Ugo Foscolo: An Italian in Regency England (Cambridge, 1953); P. Mandler, Aristocratic Government in the Age of Reform: Whigs and Liberals 1830–1852 (Oxford, 1990); L. Mitchell, Holland House (London, 1980). On the exiles at Bowood House see Carlo Poerio to Lord Holland, 6 October 1832, BL, Holland House Papers, 51837. ¹⁶ J. S. Mill to Mr. and Ms. Grote, 14 November 1822, in The Earlier Letters of John Stuart Mill, 1812–1848, ed. F. Mineka ( Toronto, 1963), in J. M. Robson (ed.), Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, 33 vols ( Toronto 1963–91), xii, p. 15.


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timeless principles, but in order to adjust institutions to the progress made by society as a result of the advancement of civilization.¹⁷ Despite a residual debt to eighteenth-century ideas of representation as representation of interests and social ranks which the philosophical Whigs, like the doctrinaires, believed ought to be reflected in Parliament, reference to this progressive notion of social development could be used to justify reform of the franchise. In the Edinburgh Reviewers’ opinion it was high time for the middling ranks to see their social role recognized, through an extension of the franchise and better chances for the interests of the middle and lower classes to be represented in Parliament.¹⁸ Admittedly, an interest in English politics pre-dated the experience of exile. Articles in the leading Romantic journal, the Conciliatore, portrayed English society as a model of patriotism and a polity whose political leadership combined civic virtues and a direct engagement with social issues, Henry Brougham being the most quoted English politician in the journal, a figure greatly admired for his defence of the freedom of the press, of Habeas Corpus, and for his role in antislavery campaigns and in promoting popular education.¹⁹ However, before 1821, among the Italian liberals only the Milanese Count Federico Confalonieri, Sigismondo Trechi, and the Tuscan Pietro Capponi had visited England, where they identified themselves with the views of the Whig aristocrats.²⁰ It is safe to say that the experience of exile greatly enhanced the Italian liberals’ understanding of England and laid the foundations of Risorgimento Anglophilia. Since many of Foscolo’s observations on English society remained unpublished, the most important writings on England were undoubtedly those by Giuseppe Pecchio. His Osservazioni semi-serie di un esule sull’Inghilterra (1831), printed in Lugano, circulated in Italy in spite of censorship, and were appreciated by the liberal circles of Milan and Florence.²¹ Reprinted in Switzerland in 1833, the Osservazioni were also republished in England, Belgium, and the United States.²² Pecchio’s earlier study of the electoral process in England bears witness to his understanding of parties and party politics, and marks a new point of departure in Risorgimento political thought.²³ By the same token, Beltrami’s travel writings, published ¹⁷ B. Hilton, A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People: England 1783–1846 (Oxford, 2006), pp. 346–53. ¹⁸ B. M. Fontana, Rethinking the Politics of Commercial Society: The Edinburgh Review 1802–1832 (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 152–60. ¹⁹ L. Di Breme to F. Confalonieri, 28 August 1816, in L. Di Breme, P. Camporesi (ed.), Lettere ( Turin, 1966), p. 354. See S. Pellico, ‘Discorso di Henry Brougham . . .’, Il Conciliatore, I, 238–43. ²⁰ Isabella, ‘Il ‘‘Conciliatore’’ e l’Inghilterra’. ²¹ They were quoted extensively in the Milanese Annali Universali di Statistica, 30 (1831), 299–316. ²² They appeared in London and Philadelphia as Semi-Serious Observation of an Italian Exile during his Residence in England in 1833; in French in Brussels in 1838 as Causeries d’un exilé sur l’Angleterre. Here I will quote the 1833 English edition. ²³ G. Pecchio, Un’elezione di membri del parlamento in Inghilterra (Lugano, 1826). Here I will refer to the version published in Pecchio, SP.

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in London but reviewed in Italy, also contain many comments on English politics and society reflecting the circulation of certain continental tropes among the Italian liberals. Various other pamphlets on the Irish question likewise shed some light on how the exiles conceived relations between Church and State.²⁴ The encounter with English politics was important at many levels. Through their exchanges with English as well as French thinkers and politicians, Foscolo, Pecchio, Santarosa, Beltrami, and the other Italian exiles were inspired, either directly or indirectly, to reassess the prevailing conditions in Italy and, more importantly, to wonder to what extent England could represent a model of nationhood, commercial society, and free institutions for a future independent Italian political community. Their observations on English vices and virtues allowed them to begin the process of assessing Italian society in relation to an external model, and differences between the Italians and the English were accounted for on sociological, historical, and political grounds. Evaluations of the nature of English mores were thus carried out in direct and indirect reference to the Italian case. Secondly, an analysis of the exiles’ writings on England and on the constitutional projects they imagined for Italy in the light of their own experiences abroad raises important issues about the nature of their liberalism and the impact that English politics had on those exiles who, like Foscolo, had formerly been democrats or had supported the Napoleonic regime. I have analysed a broad variety of sources, including Foscolo’s articles ´ on the constitutional history of Venice, Francesco Salfi’s Eloge de Filangieri and other obscure projects that show how the exiles reflected both on the failures of the 1820–1 revolutions and on the constitutions they studied in exile, discussing the desirability of transferring them to Italy without disregarding the peculiar conditions of its societies. Pellegrino Rossi’s articles published in Geneva and Paris were undeniably the foremost theoretical contribution to the Italian liberals’ understanding of representative government, and were also admired by and influential among French liberals. There were also publications by democrats who took England as an example of a corrupt oligarchic government to be rejected. Risorgimento Anglophilia has been interpreted as evidence of the liberals’ attachment to pre-modern notions of representation and society, and to an idea of aristocracy as a pre-revolutionary corporation, and so much so that historians have considered moderate constitutionalism to be backward, if not reactionary, and the Risorgimento elites’ corporative understanding of society to be evidence of their rejection of modern notions of representative government. In particular, Marco Meriggi has described the political motives of the generation of liberals under scrutiny here as those of an oligarchy hostile to Napoleonic reform and anxious to reaffirm pre-revolutionary hegemony at the local level, when plotting ²⁴ G. C. Beltrami, A Pilgrimage in Europe and America, 2 vols (London, 1828).


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against Austrian rule.²⁵ According to Luca Mannori, in the decades after the Napoleonic period, Italian constitutionalism rejected the notion of national sovereignty, and was loyal to a ‘pluralistic conception of the nation’, based on the pre-modern liberties of corporate interests.²⁶ This interpretation reflects the more general critical stance adopted by Italian post-war historiography towards Italian liberalism, which has commonly been regarded as backward and antirevolutionary. Although elements of continuity between Foscolo’s democratic and revolutionary beliefs and his later Anglophilia have been discerned in recent years, historians have tended to contrast his early democratic-Jacobin political attitudes with his later moderate, anti-revolutionary and pessimistic views when in exile.²⁷ By locating the exiles’ observations in a pan-European framework, I hope to contribute to our understanding of the relationship between early Risorgimento and European liberalism, and understand the implications of many exiles’ enthusiastic endorsement of the English political system for their imagining of a future Italian political community. As I shall demonstrate, their observations point to the development of a moderate liberalism that was neither backward nor reactionary by European standards.

‘ N AT U R A L LY F R E E ’ : E N G L I S H N AT I O N A L C H A R AC T E R AND SOCIETY One of the reasons why all the aristocratic and many of the non-aristocratic exiles found English society so alluring was that it provided an alternative model of aristocracy, whose conduct and demeanour might inspire them to fashion an Italian nobility better suited to their liberal and national programme. If they were so drawn towards the English upper classes, it was due to their dissatisfaction with the role aristocrats had played recently in society and politics in Italy, and their lack of commitment to public duty. In search of an appropriate political ²⁵ M. Meriggi, ‘Liberalismo o libertà dei ceti? Costituzionalismo lombardo agli albori della restaurazione’, Studi Storici, 22 (1981), 315–43; S. La Salvia, ‘Il moderatismo in Italia’, in U. Corsini and R. Lill (eds), ‘Istituzioni e ideologie in Italia e in Germania tra le rivoluzioni’, Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico, Quaderno 23 (1987), 169–310. ²⁶ L. Mannori, ‘La crisi dell’ordine plurale. Nazione e costituzione in Italia tra sette e ottocento’, in M. Sbriccoli, P. Costa, M. Fioravanti, P. Cappellini and L. Mannori (eds), Ordo Iuris: Storia e forme dell’esperienza giuridica (Milan, 2003), pp. 137–180. On the weakness of Italian constitutionalism since the 1820s see also R. Romanelli, ‘Nazione e costituzione nell’opinione liberale avanti il ’48’, in P. L. Ballini (ed.), La Rivoluzione Liberale e Le Nazioni Divise (Venice, 2000), pp. 271–304. ²⁷ For a perceptive analysis of the historiography of Foscolo’s political thought see C. Del Vento, ‘Il democraticismo di Ugo Foscolo: alcune considerazioni intorno a un consolidato giudizio critico e storiografico’, in M. Santagata and A. Stussi (eds), Studi per Umberto Carpi (Pisa, 2000), pp. 357–74; idem, ‘Una nuova ‘‘eloquenza popolare’’: Vincenzo Cuoco e Ugo Foscolo tra dibattito politico e riforma letteraria’, in L. Biscardi and A. De Francesco (eds), Vincenzo Cuoco nella cultura di due secoli (Bari, 2002), pp. 111–23.

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elite for a future Italy, the exiles found in England what they thought could be taken as an ideal type. The exiles’ critique of the Italian aristocracy as a class in decay built on the views of eighteenth-century philosophers such as Pietro Verri, who had encouraged aristocrats to serve their country and who had argued that the criterion to adopt in selecting governing elites should be personal merit, as displayed in the cultivation of the public good, and not birth.²⁸ A debt was also owed to the Histoire des républiques italiennes, in which Sismondi had pointed to the decay of the Italian aristocracy as evidence of the general decline of Italian society, brought about by despotism and the noblemen’s gradual abandonment of useful professions, and of service to the state.²⁹ Many liberals agreed with Sismondi that the Napoleonic period had seen a decisive shift in the attitude of the aristocracy, which finally relinquished its life of ease in favour of joining the army or working for the state-bureaucracy. Aware of Sismondi’s observations and with the example of the English aristocracy in mind, the Lombard and Piedmontese liberals writing in Il Conciliatore had sought to redefine the aristocrats’ role in society, through a commitment to philanthropic projects, patriotism, and an active engagement in politics.³⁰ These themes were further developed during exile, which made a direct comparison between the two national elites possible. A comparative approach to Italian and English society underpins Ugo Foscolo’s Lettere scritte dall’Inghilterra.³¹ Foscolo’s comparison was primarily intended to highlight the relationship between private and public morality and freedom, a central theme in European political debate since Montesquieu’s De l’Esprit des lois and Voltaire’s Lettres sur l’Angleterre. The image of a sophisticated society, in which bon ton, fashion, and social manners are the reflection of civic awareness, freedom, and a respect for human dignity emerges from the pages of the Lettere. As an example of an enlightened English aristocrat, Foscolo takes his friend and patron Lord Henry Holland, thanks to whose liberality he has access to an impressive library: the poet ironically observes that cultivated minds are fashionable in England.³² The Italian aristocrats at whom Foscolo’s pages are directed, the Milanese Baron Trechi and Count Carlo Cicogna, represented the exact opposite of Lord Holland: although Anglophile in taste and elegance and obsessed with English dress and demeanour, Foscolo denounced their imitation of the English upper classes as merely superficial.³³ His account of the accident of Count Cicogna who, having run over and killed an old man while riding his newly acquired tilbury, is comforted and consoled by ladies and admired ²⁸ On this see C. Donati, L’idea di nobiltà in Italia. Secoli XIV–XVIII (Bari, 1988), pp. 351–2, 58–9. ²⁹ R. Bizzochi, ‘Cicisbei: la morale italiana’, Storica, 3 (1997), 63–90. ³⁰ Isabella, ‘Il ‘‘Conciliatore’’ e l’Inghilterra’. ³¹ U. Foscolo, Lettere scritte dall’Inghilterra (Gazzettino del bel mondo), ed. E. Sanguineti (Milan, 1978), p. 25. ³² Foscolo, Lettere, p. 57. ³³ Ibid., p. 56.


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in coffee-houses, serves to condemn the aristocrats’ lack of respect for their servants and the profound social inequalities of Italian society.³⁴ The anecdote, in all likelihood modelled upon an episode recounted in the poem Il Mattino, a masterpiece of the Lombard Enlightenment written by Giuseppe Parini, provides an opportunity to point the contrast between the mores of England, where ‘the laws are relentless for all’, and those of Italy, where ‘the laws [. . .] only punished the populace’.³⁵ Parini, however, had also been sceptical about the alleged benefits of commerce as a source of social improvement and moral regeneration, and in this he was at odds with Lombard journalists like Pietro and Alessandro Verri, who had endorsed Coyer’s idea of a ‘noblesse commerçante’. So, too, had Foscolo, whose admiration for the conduct of English aristocracy reflected the Enlightenment appreciation of the benefits of commerce to society and echoed debates in Il Caffè.³⁶ Foscolo employed this same argument to advance a theory of bon ton, based on the idea that in England the money made available by commercial pursuits provided a stimulus to elegance through emulation, rather than to envy.³⁷ English social conventions thereby served to highlight the effects of centuries of despotism in Italy, and demonstrated the advantages enjoyed by commercial societies through their offering all ranks access, in principle, to the sphere of taste, refinement, and elegance. Foscolo extended this social critique rooted in Enlightenment debates about a morally degraded aristocratic society to women.³⁸ The English ladies’ comparatively superior standing and freedom in society stood in sharp contrast with the condition of Italian women of the same rank. Foscolo’s ‘The women of Italy’ pointed to the existence of the ‘cavalier servente’ or ‘cicisbeo’, and the lack of social freedom granted to women, as evidence of the ‘political degradation’ of Italy, itself due to the influence of religion over society and to the effects of legislation. While the phenomenon of cicibeismo, that is, the custom of aristocratic ladies being chaperoned by a man other than their husband on social occasions, had disappeared in northern Italy during the Napoleonic period, it was still common in Rome.³⁹ In Foscolo’s view, cicibeismo could be interpreted as a reaction to the constraints imposed upon upper-class women, who could not marry freely—the husband being chosen by their fathers without their consent—and had no access to society before marriage. By contrast, in England, both young unmarried ³⁴ Ibid., pp. 69–70, 72–3. ³⁵ Ibid. ³⁶ On Parini’s dispute with Verri see M. Dominichelli, Cavaliere e gentiluomo: Saggio sulla cultura aristocratica in Europa (1513–1915) (Rome, 2002), pp. 469–79. See Verri’s review of Parini’s poem in ‘Sul Ridicolo’, G. Francioni and S. Romagnoli (eds), Il Caffè 1764–1766 ( Turin, 1993), pp. 560–6; and A. Verri, ‘Alcune riflessioni sulla opinione che il commercio deroghi alla nobiltà’, in ibid., pp. 256–74. ³⁷ Foscolo, Lettere, p. 73. ³⁸ L. Guerci, La discussione sulla donna nell’Italia del Settecento: Aspetti e problemi ( Turino, 1987); R. Messbarger, The Century of Women: Representation of Women in Eighteenth-Century Italian Public Discourse ( Toronto, Buffalo, and London, 2002), pp. 87–103. ³⁹ U. Foscolo, ‘The women of Italy’ [1826], EN, 12, pp. 418–69.

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women and elderly ladies who were married had access to society and to polite conversation.⁴⁰ Furthermore, women pursuing literary careers and attracted to erudition were much more respected in England than in Italy, where they were normally the object of ridicule.⁴¹ Foscolo’s idealization of English aristocracy as the model of what a ruling class should be, and the similar views held by Italian exiles of English society in general, likewise accorded with the writings of contemporary French liberals. Santorre di Santarosa may be taken to exemplify the importance of the French perspective in fostering attitudes favourable to English aristocratic society. A personal friend of Victor Cousin, before moving to London he had spent some time in Paris, where he frequented doctrinaire circles and was acquainted with Royer-Collard. If Cousinian eclecticism appealed to moderates such as Santarosa, it was because the philosophy favoured liberalism and constitutional monarchy, with the latter deemed to be the perfect synthesis between ancien régime and revolution, king and people, and cast as the political expression of his philosophical system.⁴² For Santarosa the English aristocracy was the only aristocracy in Europe which did not oppress the other classes in society.⁴³ The importance of aristocracy as an element of the constitutional balance, as long as it abided by the laws and was an open body, accessible to anybody deserving recognition, was accordingly acknowledged by him: English America is superior to the motherland for the higher equality introduced in its institutions; but in England there is more life, there is more nobility of spirit. Foolish thing to complain against the English aristocracy, although here this is done by an endless number of people. An aristocracy subjected to the laws, and to which anybody can easily rise thanks to his own industry or to that of his family, is a necessary element in a great and very wealthy country, and is never a thing to be despised.⁴⁴

Endorsing Guizot’s distinction between an open, mobile aristocracy based on merit, necessary to establish a modern ruling class and stabilize society, and the old feudal nobility, the exiles shared with Santarosa the idea that the openness of the English aristocracy was a feature to be replicated in Italy.⁴⁵ Another key question raised by the comparison between the two societies was whether or not English virtues and Italian vices were the product of permanent, ⁴⁰ U. Foscolo, ‘The women of Italy’ [1826], EN, 12, p. 434. ⁴¹ U. Foscolo, ‘Life of Pious VI’ [1819], EN, 12, 48–9. ⁴² S. Mastellone, Victor Cousin e il Risorgimento Italiano (Florence, 1955), p. 28. ⁴³ Santarosa to his wife Carolina, London, 12 February, 1823, in S. di Santarosa, Lettere dall’esilio (1821–25), ed. A. Olmo (Rome, 1969), p. 316. ⁴⁴ Santarosa to Provana, 14 June 1823, in Santarosa, Lettere, ed. Olmo, p. 351. ⁴⁵ F. Dal Pozzo, Motifs de la publicité donné a` la lettre adressé a S.M. le Roi de Sardigne Charles Albert . . . a` l’occasion de l’avénement au trône de ce Prince, avec des extraits de lettres du même auteur a` S. Exc. Le chevalier De Montiglio, premier président du Sénat de Piémont, pour servir de commentaires a` la première (Paris, 1831), partially republished by L. Bollea in ‘Ferdinando Dal Pozzo dopo il 1821’, Il Risorgimento Italiano, 15 (1922), 306–11, at 310; cf. F. Guizot, Du gouvernement de la France depuis la restauration et du ministère actuel (Paris, 1820), p. 106.


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inborn circumstances. In attempting to account for the differences between Italian and English society, notions of national character played a crucial role in assessing the nature of social life. The idea of national character was associated with an equally elusive term, that of manners, which indicated the qualities, patterns of conduct, and opinions of societies.⁴⁶ The exiles’ evaluation of English and Italian national characters combined a description of given, fixed features with an assessment of the impact of political institutions. Admittedly, Foscolo conceded that Italians were ‘naturally endowed with imagination’, but this was neither necessarily a negative feature nor a fundamental handicap in becoming free.⁴⁷ In positioning himself in the debate over the effect of climate on national character, Pecchio endorsed Montesquieu’s stance and rejected Helvétius and Filangieri’s scepticism about climatological determinism and their emphasis on the paramount influence of education.⁴⁸ Indeed, Pecchio thought that the English propensity for philosophical thinking, industry, and activity was primarily due to lack of sunshine.⁴⁹ Pecchio did not, however, subscribe to the notion that a human being’s capacity for freedom was the exclusive result of external natural and geographical factors. He thus acknowledged the importance of institutions and education as a source of potential reform for Italian society. He observed that the natural laziness and indolence of the people of the south could be and had been dealt with by means of education and political institutions, thus leaving a door open to the possibility of Italy becoming a modern commercial society.⁵⁰ As a matter of fact, he attributed an equally important role to institutions and education in shaping key features of English society. The effects of freedom upon society, argued Pecchio, were even registered at the level of family life in England, where fathers treated their children with the utmost respect and where corporal punishment was banned.⁵¹ In composing his portrait of English society, Giacomo Beltrami had likewise recognized that education played a central role in shaping this country’s character and in determining a markedly precocious attainment of adulthood. As in the case of Foscolo and Pecchio, for Beltrami the national character resulted from a combination of natural circumstances, such as the weather, and the influence of government and education.⁵² John Bull might well be ‘irascible and violent [. . .] avaricious from temper, and generous from pride’, as Beltrami was willing to concede, but he was nonetheless patriotic because of the freedom he enjoyed and the education he had received, and this made the English ‘the first people in the ⁴⁶ R. Romani, National Character and Public Spirit in Britain and France, 1750–1914 (Cambridge, 2002). ⁴⁷ Foscolo, Lettere, pp. 67, 82. ⁴⁸ Pecchio, Semi-Serious Observations, pp. 12–13. On Montesquieu and Helvétius and the debate on the effects of climate in French eighteenth-century thought see now Romani, National Character, pp. 22–31, 51–4. ⁴⁹ Pecchio, Semi-Serious, p. 19. ⁵⁰ Ibid., p. 15. ⁵¹ Ibid., pp. 21–3. ⁵² Beltrami, A Pilgrimage, i, p. 442.

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world’.⁵³ Conversely, for Beltrami in Italy a specific combination of natural and political circumstances (‘the prejudices which an oppressive policy, under the mask of religion, infuses into our useful minds’) prevented this from happening in Italy.⁵⁴ The conclusions the Italian exiles drew from comparing Italian and English societies were that the English might have been more rational, reflective, and inclined to hard work, and the Italians more imaginative and emotional; yet what made the English superior by far to the Italians, was an appropriate education and good government. There was no doubt that an assessment of the qualities of the English confirmed in the exiles’ minds the supposition that the moral debasement affecting Italians was due to the despotic nature of their government. This moral degeneration had not only condemned the populace to ignorance and indifference but, as Ugo Foscolo observed, also degraded the upper classes. English society thus appeared as the polar opposite of contemporary Italy, and it was English freedom Italians should aspire to if they wished to become a nation. This discussion owed much to the debates of the Italian Enlightenment as well as to contemporary, and in particular French discussions inspired by observing the social structure of Great Britain. It was to the political life of the country that they turned with equal interest and enthusiasm in their efforts to understand the particular qualities of English society.

E N G L I S H P O L I T I C S : PA RT I E S , E L E C T I O N S , AND INSTITUTIONS Continental political literature in the Restoration period almost invariably criticized the role of parties in politics. In most cases European writers did not see political pluralism as a positive feature of a liberal society, but rather as a reflection of dangerous divisions undermining the nation. This prejudice owed much to the ideas of Rousseau, who had dismissed parties as sociétés partielles undermining the volonté générale. The discussion of the negative consequences of civic discords for the polity represented a topos of the republican tradition. This had been endorsed by the French and Italian Jacobins who, following Rousseau, favoured union and consensus in politics and tended to conflate the idea of partito with the pejorative terms of faction and sect, thus exclusively emphasizing their potential threat to the stability of the republic.⁵⁵ Given the revolutionary context in which ⁵³ Beltrami, A Pilgrimage, i, pp. 462, 396. ⁵⁴ Ibid., p. 441. ⁵⁵ Q. Skinner, The Foundation of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols (Cambridge, 1978), i, pp. 181–2, 235. J. J. Rousseau, The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, ed. V. Gourevitch (Cambridge, 1997), p. 60. On the meaning and use of the term partito among Italian Jacobins see E. Leso, Lingua e Rivoluzione: Ricerche sul vocabolario politico italiano del triennio rivoluzionario 1796–1799 (Venice, 1991), pp. 234–6; for France see P. Rosanvallon, Le Peuple introuvable: Histoire de la représentation démocratique en France (Paris, 1998), pp. 173–7.


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most of the exiles had observed the functioning of representative governments in Mexico, Greece, and Guatemala, their constant appeal for union and their warning against the threat of parties as factions is hardly surprising. According to Guido de Ruggiero, Italian moderate political thought in the Risorgimento remained suspicious of divisions and political parties.⁵⁶ For this reason the exiles’ writings on England are of exceptional interest and importance, since their observation of English politics enabled them to break with most post-revolutionary comment from continental Europe regarding the role of parties. What Pecchio and Foscolo offered in their discussions was, if not a rounded theory of parties, at any rate an analysis of their role in contemporary England. Considering parties to be crucial building blocks, along with opposition and public opinion, of a modern polity, they provided some of the earliest truly ‘liberal’ appraisals of their positive role in Risorgimento political literature. The creation of a two-party system entailing rotation in government represented a unique feature of politics in England. Although parties were far from being internally cohesive and there was occasional confusion about their programmes, there is no doubt that by the 1820s ‘politics was polarised, bipartisan, and often bitter’.⁵⁷ The success of periodicals like the Edinburgh Review and the Westminster Review, with their distinctive political programmes, and the development of popular, partisan participation in elections of those without right to vote, made party politics a crucial element of the political culture of the country.⁵⁸ It was precisely their appreciation of this aspect of English politics that marked in Foscolo and Pecchio the shift away from the ‘Jacobin’ model towards a liberal appreciation of the benefits of parties in politics. An early indication of this interest in the workings of the English political system can be detected in Foscolo’s Discorsi della servitù d’Italia (1815), where Foscolo had contrasted the positive example of English parties with sects, or groups of people representing private interests hostile to the public good, and had claimed that ‘to remake Italy it is necessary to remake sects’. For him the difference between factions or sects and parties was clear, the latter being ‘associations of free men, who have different opinions or interests, with regard to the ways of governing public opinion; but, in the case of the common safety and glory, they always find an agreement with their adversaries’.⁵⁹ We can deduce Foscolo’s opinion about English parties and assess the impact that his stay in England had on his political views from a section of his Stato politico delle isole Jonie (1817), entitled Dell’unione, which addressed the need ⁵⁶ G. de Ruggiero, Storia del liberalismo europeo (Bari, 1959), p. 312. ⁵⁷ Hilton, A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People, p. 209. ⁵⁸ F. O’Gorman, The Emergence of the British Two-Party System, 1760–1832 (London, 1982); idem, Voters, Patrons and Parties: The Unreformed Electoral System of Hanoverian England 1734–1832 (Oxford, 1989); idem, ‘Campaign Rituals and Ceremonies: The Social Meaning of Elections in England, 1780–1860’, Past and Present, 135 (1992), 79–115. ⁵⁹ U. Foscolo, ‘Della servitù d’Italia’, EN, 8, pp. 182–5.

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to avoid civil discord.⁶⁰ In his Stato Politico Foscolo most probably drew the terms of his analysis from the Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio and the Istorie Fiorentine, in which Machiavelli had highlighted both the positive contribution of civic disputes to the well-being of a republic and the potential threat posed by conflict and dissension among factions and sects to its stability and to freedom itself.⁶¹ Admittedly, Foscolo warned against the degeneration of partiti either into factions, which aimed at imposing the authority of a leader over the republic through civil wars and tyranny, or into sects, which represented the interests of single citizens acting solely for their own benefit.⁶² However, he made a fundamental distinction between partiti, fazioni, and sétte. The disputes arising between partiti, made up of plebs and nobility, or of people with different political views, fostered a healthy dynamic which reinforced the freedom of the republic, since they were based upon a common love of country and respect for the laws. He thus drew a parallel between Machiavelli’s ancient Rome and modern England: The parties are made up of different classes of men, such as the nobles, the people and plebeians, or of people who have different opinions in politics, and disagree about the means to make the republic prosper; but all these parties are otherwise in agreement in loving the fatherland, and in defending it as their fatherland, and in observing the laws [. . .] These are the parties today in England: these were the parties in Rome since the times of the Gracchi.⁶³

As the fall of the Roman Republic had shown, party conflicts could degenerate into despotism, while contemporary Italy demonstrated how disputes among sects could be exacerbated by foreign domination.⁶⁴ Like Foscolo, Pecchio, when addressing the issue of parties and opposition in a chapter from his Semi-Serious Observations entitled ‘The Opposition in the House of Commons’, viewed the role of parties in the light of the republican debate about civil discord, and cried up their positive, not their negative connotations. Elaborating on Gaetano Filangieri’s argument that in free countries the citizens’ love of power could only strengthen patriotism and the love of justice, Pecchio claimed that although driven by love of power and office, party politics was always accompanied by a promotion of the public good and of patriotism.⁶⁵ In particular, Pecchio’s extended discussion of ⁶⁰ U. Foscolo, ‘Stato politico delle isole Jonie’, EN, 13, I, pp. 11–18. He had also prepared a draft outline for a section of his Lettere dall’Inghilterra, entitled ‘Whigs e Tories’, which featured the same headings as the ‘Stato politico’ (EN, V, pp. xc, 260). ⁶¹ G. Bock, ‘Civil Discord in Machiavelli’s Istorie Fiorentine’, in G. Bock, Q. Skinner, and M. Viroli (eds), Machiavelli and Republicanism (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 181–201. ⁶² Foscolo, ‘Stato politico’, p. 17. ⁶³ Ibid., p. 16. ⁶⁴ Ibid., p. 18; idem, ‘History of the democratic constitution of Venice’ [1827], EN, 12, pp. 472–561, 543. ⁶⁵ Pecchio, Semi-Serious, pp. 143–4. Cf. G. Filangieri, La scienza della legislazione, 6 vols (Milan, 1822), i, p. 145. In the same period Cesare Balbo, during his termporary exile in France, reached


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the role of the opposition represented a remarkable achievement, unrivalled by anything in the work of contemporary Italian authors. Pecchio dismissed the view that the hundred members of Parliament making up the opposition were a weak, powerless minority condemned to silence. On the contrary, he maintained that the opposition had the ‘negative’ role of curbing the majority, preventing it from inevitably degenerating into tyranny, and that it tended to represent the interests of the oppressed, thus favouring the improvement of liberal institutions.⁶⁶ Aware of Burke’s positive remarks on the importance of the opposition, Pecchio endorsed the view, which had only become common currency in English politics since the end of the previous century, that the opposition represented an alternative to those in office and would sooner or later replace them.⁶⁷ Furthermore, he was keen to present evidence to the effect that opposition campaigns, such as the abolition of the slave trade, Parliamentary reform, trade liberalization, Catholic emancipation, though first advocated by small minorities, had with time obtained broader support, influenced the majority, and resulted in legislative change, as Wilberforce’s battle against slavery had already proved.⁶⁸ Party politics, pace Rousseau, were thus not a factor of disintegration in the polity but actually fostered patriotism and progress. Besides political parties, electoral process and the influence of public opinion further enhanced the vitality of English politics. On both these themes the exiles’ views were in tune with those of the French doctrinaires. In keeping with the arguments of the French observers, and without disregarding the faults and shortcomings of an obsolete, corrupt, and incoherent electoral system, occasionally marred by violence, Pecchio was inclined to praise canvassing and all the other, sometimes rumbustious aspects of electoral campaigning as true examples of political participation.⁶⁹ In his Un’elezione di membri del parlamento inglese, Pecchio described the parliamentary elections as ‘the most important, most solemn (act) of the people’s sovereignty’ and stressed the importance of the participation of the non-voters in the political activities surrounding the elections.⁷⁰ It was the portion of the population engaged in industrial work, often described by contemporary observers as brutalized and deadened by its labour in manufactories, that Pecchio described as the active element in political the same conclusions regarding the positive role of opposition in a constitutional regime, but his observations remained unpublished. See E. Passerin D’Entrèves, La giovinezza di Cesare Balbo (Florence, 1940), pp. 252–3. ⁶⁶ Pecchio, Semi-Serious, pp. 140–1. ⁶⁷ Ibid., where he refers to Burke. On Burke and political parties see J. Brewer, Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III (Cambridge, 1976), pp. 73–6. ⁶⁸ Pecchio, Semi-Serious, p. 137–8. ⁶⁹ P. Duvergier de Hauranne,Lettres sur les élections anglaises et sur la situation de l’Irlande (Paris, 1827), pp. 123–4. ⁷⁰ Pecchio, Un’elezione, in SP, pp. 229, 267–8.

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life, and ‘the greatest democratic element of England’ protected by the members of the opposition.⁷¹ The public speeches, the canvassing, the debates surrounding the elections, the work of the electoral committees, the exposure of candidates to the people represented, in his view, evidence of the thriving political life of England and the very essence of the civic virtues of the English nation. The direct contact between electors and candidates, and the direct ballot made the English system vastly superior to the one he himself had experienced in Spain, where indirect voting rights kept voters and candidates apart.⁷² In describing the electoral process, Pecchio clearly viewed party politics as hinging upon local as well as national economic and social tensions, and saw it as a channel serving to convey conflicting interests in politics. What struck all the exiles was the fact that virtually no section of society was excluded from some sort of engagement with politics, even when no electoral campaigns were taking place, and that the development of the public sphere had no rival in Europe. Giacomo Beltrami noticed that the English were good citizens because they were the ‘best informed of any’ nation, and that at tea and supper ‘everybody discusses the affairs of the administration, of public societies and speculations; peace, war, Whigs, Tories’.⁷³ But public opinion was not simply a matter of improving information on political affairs among the people: it entailed cutting a new channel of communication between civil society and government, creating an effective form of pressure from below, and establishing a dialogue between government and governed.⁷⁴ This unstinting praise of public opinion as a key element of political life reflected a further contribution made by English politics to the political culture of the exiles. Indeed, lessons learned in England enabled the exiles to curb the quintessentially Napoleonic desire to create a public opinion from above, a ‘public mind’ to be instructed and guided by the authorities with the aim of fostering obedience and attachment to the new national institutions. The need to shape public opinion from above continued to be perceived as vital by the Italian exiles when discussing the revolutionary conditions of new-born countries like Mexico or Greece, where indeed the authorities and the army had to encourage civic virtues from above in order to consolidate the new political order. But when commenting on English politics, the exiles, once again in accord with the French doctrinaires, took opinion to be an integral part of the political sphere, a vital link between society and government that did not threaten social stability.⁷⁵ ⁷¹ Pecchio, Un’elezione, in SP, p. 235. ⁷² Ibid., p. 256. ⁷³ Beltrami, A Pilgrimage, i, p. 443. ⁷⁴ Pecchio, Semi-Serious, pp. 65–6. ⁷⁵ Rosanvallon, Le moment Guizot, pp. 64–72. On the use of ‘spirito pubblico’ during the Napoleonic era see Isabella, ‘Italy 1760–1815’, in H. Burrows and S. Barker (eds), Press, Politics and the Public Sphere in Europe and North America 1760–1820 (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 201–23.


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Admiration for the participatory nature of English politics was part and parcel of a broader appreciation, once again in line with that of French moderate liberals, of the democratic nature of English political system. Indeed, as Linda Colley has noted, the 1820s witnessed an unprecedented increase in the number of petitions, public demonstrations, and marches: in short popular politics thrived and had a considerable impact on the political life of the country.⁷⁶ This feature of English life struck the Italian exiles. Writing in 1822 to the Brussels-based exiled Marchioness Costanza Visconti-Arconati, Count Luigi Porro described a public meeting during which Hobhouse and Burdett had proposed to an audience of ten to twelve thousand people several petitions, ‘adopted with admirable tranquillity’: ‘This is truly a great nation; I forgive it if it has too much pride; I believe that ours in Italy can only be vanity.’⁷⁷ In the eyes of the exiles evidence of the fundamentally democratic nature of English society was supplied also by a social mobility for which there was no comparison in continental Europe, and by forms of social interaction characterized by a combination of respect for hierarchy with genuine equality before the law.⁷⁸ Finally, exactly like the French doctrinaires, they believed that in England democracy was fostered by the forms of direct participation offered by local government.⁷⁹ It should also be remembered that such enthusiastic comments on English politics were often couched in a language that owed much to Whig ideology. Adopting a Whiggish commonplace, Beltrami said that the English aristocracy tended to side with the nation, not with the king.⁸⁰ Santorre di Santarosa cheerfully described himself as an ‘incorrigible Whig’, and wrote enthusiastically about James Mackintosh.⁸¹ Indeed, aristocrats like Santorre di Santarosa, Carlo Asinari di San Marzano, Giuseppe Pecchio, Ferdinando Dal Pozzo, and others were fully aware of the shortcomings of English legislation and of the need to reform the electoral system and to eradicate the most blatant flaws of the English legislation, endorsing Samuel Romilly’s critical remarks on the English judicial system and on penal legislation.⁸² At the same time, however, the aristocratic exiles were hostile to radical critiques of the English constitution. That is why, though they fully supported the Reform Bill in 1832, for the majority of them, Bentham or Mill’s reform plans, even if interesting as intellectual exercises, were too advanced. Carlo Asinari di San Marzano, commenting on James Mill’s articles on government and electoral reform, wrote that the ⁷⁶ L. Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (3rd edn, London, 2003), pp. 362–3. ⁷⁷ London, 14 February 1822, Porro to C. Visconti Arconati, V-AA, f.52. ⁷⁸ Beltrami, A Pilgrimage, i, pp. 355, 357. ⁷⁹ Pecchio, Un’elezione, p. 236. Cf. de Staël-Holstein, Letters on England, pp. 121–2. ⁸⁰ Beltrami, A Pilgrimage, i, p. 361. ⁸¹ Mastellone, Victor Cousin, p. 46. ⁸² P. Rossi, ‘De l’ e´tude du droit dans ses rapports avec la civilisation’, in Mélanges d’économie politique, d’histoire et de philosophie, 2 vols (Paris, 1857), ii, p. 368, where Rossi refers to Romilly’s Observations on the Criminal Law of England (1811).

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privileges granted by the English constitution and attacked by Mill had actually been ‘founded with a great deal of prudence’.⁸³ So far as their political views were concerned, they could be considered to be at most ‘philosophical Whigs’, rather than philosophical radicals. It should be borne in mind that these positive appreciations of party politics and of the democratic nature of English political dynamics in general were not endorsed by all Italian observers, and indeed not by the democrats. The democratic exiles in fact continued to apply Rousseau’s negative evaluation of party politics to the English case. Writing in London, the former Jacobin Luigi Angeloni claimed that although the discussion of issues in assemblies was to be welcomed, the so-called opposition was no more than ‘aversion, for the sake of being partisan, to anything (whether good or bad)’.⁸⁴ More importantly, just a few years later, Giuseppe Mazzini’s observations on the activities of the English Parliament when reporting for the French Monde and then for the Swiss Helvétie could not have been further removed from those of Pecchio, Beltrami, and Foscolo. Impressed though Mazzini plainly was by the all but unlimited freedom of speech, press, and association the English nation enjoyed, he nonetheless still subscribed to the earlier notion that parties were factions, and therefore viewed debates in the English Parliament as merely tedious and aimless discussions which led nowhere. Even as late as the mid-1830s Mazzini did not appreciate the role of party politics in promoting exchanges of ideas vital to political life. Rather, he saw them as attempts to defend narrow sectional interests which reflected neither moral principles nor a desire to advance the needs of the nation.⁸⁵ Unlike Pecchio, Foscolo, and the liberal exiles, Mazzini considered English political life to be severed from the needs of the country, and so much so that he spoke about the existence of two separate nations, the Parliamentary and the real one.⁸⁶ In celebrating party politics and elections as cornerstones of English liberty and as pillars of a thriving civil society, the Italian Anglophiles were taking their distance not only from the political culture arising out of 1796–9 and the stance of contemporary Italian democrats like Angeloni and Mazzini, but also from Napoleonic patriotism, based as it was on martial virtues, education, and attachment to institutions but not on active citizenship. Thus in England they reinvented the republican interpretation of civil discord and shared an appreciation of popular politics with French moderate liberal culture. By this ⁸³ On the Reform Bill see, for instance, Pecchio to Panizzi, 1 May 1831, in L. Fagan (ed.), Lettere ad Antonio Panizzi di uomini illustri e di amici italiani (1823–1870) (Florence, 1880), p. 101. See Asinari di San Marzano to Sarah Austin, in Wicks, The Italian Exiles, pp. 264–5. He referred to James Mill, ‘Government’ [1820], reprinted in Essays, (London, 1828), pp. 3–32. ⁸⁴ L. Angeloni, Della forza nelle cose politiche, 2 vols (London, 1826), ii, p. 64. ⁸⁵ Mazzini, SEI, 17, pp. 3–217, and esp. pp. 44–5, 122–3, 158–9, 177–9, 194–7. ⁸⁶ Ibid., p. 159. On these writings see S. Mastellone, La democrazia etica di Mazzini (1837–1847) (Rome, 2000), pp. 49–52.


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means they acquired an understanding of political pluralism. What made the English model attractive was precisely its capacity to reconcile freedom and popular participation without subverting the social order. In the words of Pellegrino Rossi, the English bicameral system, as had already been recognized by Montesquieu and Delolme, was one in which ‘the noblemen could above all love their country, and the subjects of a monarch could be free men and real citizens’.⁸⁷

K E E PI N G T H E C AT H O L I C C H U RC H AT B AY: E X I L E L I B E R A L I S M A N D T H E I R I S H QU E S T I O N English patriotism and the direct involvement of the whole nation in politics were often admired by moderate liberals on the continent. However, along with industrial pauperism, the condition of Ireland represented in the eyes of European observers one of the most disconcerting features of the English political and economic system. What struck foreigners when first visiting Ireland were the appalling conditions of the Irish peasantry and of the Irish immigrants labouring in England, the state of oppression under which the Irish Catholics lived, kept as they were in a state of civil, economic, and political subordination by the government, the Church of Ireland, and the absentee landlords. Britain might well have been one of the freest countries in the world, but why could Ireland not share the same privileges? Duvergier de Hauranne’s articles in the Globe, published as a collection in 1827, can be taken as an example of how continental liberals set the terms of the Irish question. Duvergier was scathing about the power and influence of the Anglican Church, and hostile to the idea of the pre-eminence of one church over all others, especially in the case of Ireland. It was in the name of religious freedom, tolerance, and the enjoyment of equal rights that he advocated the full political emancipation of the Irish Catholics. Duvergier was well aware of the arguments of those who abhorred Catholic priestly influence over the Irish population, and shared with most French liberals a hostility towards the Jesuits’ influence over the French monarchy, but was keener on stressing the brutality of Anglican landowners towards the Catholic Irish peasantry, oppressed by heavy taxation and forced to fund the Established Church. Sympathizing with Daniel O’Connell’s Catholic Association, he was convinced that no fiscal or economic reform would work without the prior and full emancipation of the Catholics as a precondition for peace and stability: it was not Malthusian overpopulation that caused Irish poverty, but rather the island’s political status as an English colony.⁸⁸ Likewise, the democratic journalists of the ⁸⁷ P. Rossi, ‘Du gouvernement parlamentaire. Assemblée législative—Division en deux chambres’ [1822], in Mélanges, ii, p. 135. ⁸⁸ Duvergier de Hauranne, Lettres sur les élections anglaises.

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Milanese Annali universali di Statistica blamed the lack of independence and the unjust English economic system for the destitution of the island.⁸⁹ A number of other continental observers agreed that, for the fundamental problems of Irish agriculture to be resolved, what mattered was not so much the size of farms as the need to achieve a more equitable distribution of land ownership, and thereby to guarantee the independence of farmers.⁹⁰ In the same years, exiles like Ferdinando Dal Pozzo and Pompeo Anichini engaged in this European debate on Ireland with writings which are now all but forgotten. Their importance lies in the fact that they represent some of the earliest documents in Risorgimento literature on Ireland, a topic to which writers of the standing of Carlo Cattaneo and Camillo Cavour were to devote much intellectual energy in the following years.⁹¹ These earlier texts demonstrate the extent to which Risorgimento patriots continued to be indebted to the Napoleonic model when conceiving Church–State relations, and show how the exiles viewed the debate surrounding Catholic emancipation through the lens of a visceral anticlericalism, which stemmed from their awareness of the papacy’s hostility both to liberalism and to their political projects. Indeed, when addressing the Irish question, figures such as Dal Pozzo appear to have been overwhelmingly preoccupied with the defence of the English state against the threats posed by the Catholic Church. This concern rendered their stance on Ireland distinctive in the context of early continental liberalism. In Ferdinando Dal Pozzo’s view, what was at stake in Ireland was the right of the government to defend itself from the Catholic Church’s potential ability to undermine its authority by political means. Of the negative effect of religion upon the Irish population, Dal Pozzo had no doubts: he viewed the ignorance, fanaticism, and superstition of the Irish population as the direct result of Catholic influence.⁹² Dal Pozzo’s views reflected the mounting anticlericalism which marked French political life in the mid- and late 1820s, when the liberals reacted against what they took to be the increasing influence of the Jesuits over education and the court, perceived as a threat to representative institutions and to tolerance.⁹³ In addition, for Dal Pozzo, clerical support for Irish nationalism raised disturbing parallels with the hostility of the Catholic Church ⁸⁹ ‘Nuovi cenni statistici sul vero stato attuale dell’Irlanda’, Annali Universali di Statistica, 14 (1827), 61–78. ⁹⁰ De Staël-Holstein, Letters on England, pp. 82–3. Duvergier de Hauranne, however, sided with the British economists: see his Lettres sur les élections, p. 215n. ⁹¹ On the topic see M. Thom, ‘Great Britain and Ireland in the Thought of Carlo Cattaneo’, in A. Colombo, F. Della Peruta and C. G. Lacaita (eds), Carlo Cattaneo: I temi e le sfide (Milan, 2004), pp. 387–429, and esp. 412 and ff. ⁹² Dal Pozzo, De la nécessité très urgente de soumettre le Catholicisme romain en Irlande a` des règlemens civils spéciaux (London, 1829), p. 46. ⁹³ Ibid., pp. 14–15. On the dispute against the parti prêtre and the Jesuits in France see E. de Waresquiel and B. Yvert, Histoire de la Restauration 1814–1830 (Paris, 2002), pp. 382–7.


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towards the Napoleonic programme of Enlightenment from above. As a former Napoleonic bureaucrat, Dal Pozzo was not disposed to forget the systematic mobilization of the peasants and urban masses by the clergy against the French invader throughout the Napoleonic period everywhere in the peninsula, in the name of the faith and against revolutionary atheism.⁹⁴ He proposed for Great Britain the model of Church–State relations established in Austria by Maria Theresa and Joseph II. In other words, Dal Pozzo thought that Erastian arrangements of state control over the Church, as defined by Austrian ecclestiastical law, could settle the relationship between Catholic Church and state in Ireland.⁹⁵ The King should become the ‘external’ Head of the Catholic Church, and appoint Catholic bishops, so that its every action would be under the full control of the government; priests, like civil servants, should be paid by the state, and monastic orders abolished.⁹⁶ Dal Pozzo also defended the existence of an established Church in England, on the grounds that it did not preclude tolerance of religious minorities, which enjoyed a high degree of freedom.⁹⁷ In addition, the English situation contrasted favourably with the lack of religious freedom in Piedmont, Dal Pozzo’s homeland, where the religious freedom of the Waldensians, a Protestant minority living in the Alpine valleys, had been curtailed at the Restoration.⁹⁸ For the opposition of Irish patriots to the Union Dal Pozzo had no sympathy whatsoever. Indeed, he thought that the objective of English government should be that of fully integrating Ireland with England, not only by granting equal rights to all citizens and religions, but also by abolishing the viceroyalty and what remained of the separate government installed in Dublin Castle, thereby bringing the island under the direct control of Westminster.⁹⁹ In his view it was not in the full granting of political rights, which should be addressed only at a later stage, but rather in the solution of the land question that the proper response to Irish backwardness, poverty, and religious conflict lay. While contemporary ⁹⁴ A. M. Rao (ed.), Folle controrivoluzionarie: Le insorgenze popolari nell’Italia rivoluzionaria e napoleonica (Rome, 1999); on the Santafede see J. Davis, Naples and Napoleon: Southern Italy and the European Revolutions 1780–1860 (Oxford, 2006), pp. 107–121, 209–31. ⁹⁵ Dal Pozzo, De la nécessité très urgente, pp. 191, 196. On Joseph’s policies towards the Church see C. Capra, ‘Stato e Chiesa in Italia negli anni di Giuseppe II’, in H. Reinalter (ed.), Der Josephinismus: Bedeutung, Einflüsse und Wirkungen (Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, and New York, 1993), pp. 103–19. ⁹⁶ Dal Pozzo, De la nécessité très urgente, pp. 90–6. ⁹⁷ De la nécessité très urgente, pp. 153–4, 160. He quotes William Paley, The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (London, 1821), pp. 429–56. ⁹⁸ De la nécessité très urgente, pp. 211–13. In a public letter addressed to Lord Wellington, Dal Pozzo urged the English government to intervene on the Waldensians’ behalf, with a view to their being granted a greater degree of religious freedom. See Dal Pozzo, The Complete Emancipation of the Protestant Vaudois of Piedmont advocated in a Strong and Unanswerable Argument, and Submitted to his Grace the Duke of Wellington (London, 1829). ⁹⁹ Dal Pozzo, De la nécessité très urgente, p. 41.

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economists like McCulloch viewed the excessive division of land and the small size of farms as causes of Irish poverty, and pointed to emigration, the consolidation of smaller farms into bigger units, and the adoption of capitalistic farming on the English model as possible solutions, in Dal Pozzo’s analysis the existence of vast estates owned by the Anglican Church was primarily responsible for the destitution of the Irish peasantry. He recognized that the tithes represented a further burden on the Irish population, and advocated their abolition. Reasserting the Italian eighteenth-century preference for small over great estates, and taking the Napoleonic sale of the beni nazionali as a model, Dal Pozzo proposed that the government should buy up the land of the Anglican Church and sell it to set up a fund for the payment of the salaries of both Catholic and Anglican priests, and to finance public works. These latter, combined with the redistribution of land, would constitute the key elements in a programme of reforms designed to tackle Irish poverty.¹⁰⁰ Dal Pozzo’s views were shared by other members of the exile community, among them the Tuscan Pompeo Anichini, although his writings are characterized by a yet more virulently anticlerical tone.¹⁰¹ Anichini justified his hostility towards the cause of the political emancipation of the Irish Catholics on the grounds that the recovery of political rights would be merely exploited by the Catholic Church to regain power, influence and privileges in Ireland and England.¹⁰² According to an analysis which was in fact broadly supported by contemporary observers, he referred to the struggle against absenteeism and the abolition of tithes as providing a solution to Irish problems.¹⁰³ However, Anichini’s reaction to the development of popular politics in Ireland was wholly negative, like that of Dal Pozzo. He claimed that the deleterious influence of the leaders of the movement for emancipation produced excesses which, in his judgement, ‘surpassed the fanaticism and the cruelties of the Crusaders’.¹⁰⁴ Like Dal Pozzo, he went on to defend the supremacy of Anglican Church, as he was convinced that Protestantism was compatible with tolerance and free government, and that the Anglican religion was an integral part of the English national identity.¹⁰⁵ Given the anti-Catholic arguments used to account for the destitution of the Irish population, the tone of Anichini’s and Dal Pozzo’s pamphlets to some extent echoed more closely the Tory rather than the liberal press, the Blackwood Magazine or the Quarterly Review rather than the Edinburgh Review. ¹⁰⁰ Dal Pozzo, De la nécessitè très urgent, pp. 29–31. Cf. J. R. McCulloch, ‘Ireland’, Edinburgh Review, 37 (1822), 60–109. On contemporary views on Irish agriculture see R. D. Collison Black, Economic Thought and the Irish Question 1817–1870 (Cambridge 1960), pp. 18–21. ¹⁰¹ An Analytical and Historical View of the Catholic Religion, with Reference to Political Institutions, by an Ausonian (London, 1826). These ideas were represented in 1830 in his A Word or Two to the 228 Members who Voted Against the Second Reading of the Jews’ Relief–Bill, on the 17 th May, 1830, by an Ausonian (London, 1830). ¹⁰² An Analytical and Historical View, p. iii. ¹⁰³ Ibid., p. xvii. ¹⁰⁴ Ibid., p. viii. ¹⁰⁵ Ibid., pp. xxiv, xxv.


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Admittedly, Dal Pozzo and Anichini’s views as to the reforms needed to improve the conditions of the Irish peasantry had much in common with those proposed by the Edinburgh Reviewers, who agreed on the need for better education, and pointed to absentee landowners, high taxation and tithes as key causes of economic backwardness. However, in these same years the Whig intelligentsia was actually dismissing the conventional anti-popery justifications employed by Irish Protestant landowners as a smokescreen against reform, preferring instead to emphasize social and economic rather than religious arguments to account for Irish distress.¹⁰⁶ So far as the Italian exiles were concerned, Wellington’s concession of political emancipation in 1829, by granting access to Parliament and to almost all offices would thus have gone too far and at the same time not far enough, since it did not anticipate any direct settlement of the relationship between the English government and the Holy See according to the Josephine and Napoleonic models. In addition, the 1829 emancipation, by excluding the Jews from the benefits of full civil and political rights, failed to ensure equal treatment of all the religious communities existing in Britain.¹⁰⁷ Compared to the later Risorgimento writings of Cattaneo and Cavour, which displayed a sophisticated analysis of the socio-economic conditions of Ireland, these pamphlets might disappoint those hoping to find deeper economic arguments and a serious knowledge of the history and agricultural traditions of Ireland.¹⁰⁸ However, they reflect the influence that Protestantism, on the one hand, and the legacy of the Enlightenment and of the Napoleonic era, on the other, exerted on early Italian liberalism. Dal Pozzo’s reactions were still very much rooted in convictions inherited from the Enlightenment, and still shared by Napoleonic civil servants engaged in a war against popular piety and the influence of Catholicism over society, where the battle against the Church was one of reason and progress against superstition and decadence. Disturbing memories of the priests leading the Insorgenze were still vivid in that generation. Sympathy for Protestantism and the identification of Catholicism with the arch-enemy of the national cause represented an important feature of the Risorgimento.¹⁰⁹ Precisely when O’Connell’s movement was forging Irish national identity in terms of the opposition between Protestants and Catholics, the Italian exiles took Englishness as the national character to be defended, and did not rally to Irish Catholic patriotism, save in terms of a narrowly social and economic ¹⁰⁶ Romani, National Character, p. 205. ¹⁰⁷ P. Anichini, A Few Remarks on the Expediency and Justice of Emancipating the Jews, Addressed to his Grace the Duke of Wellington, K.G. (London 1829). ¹⁰⁸ C. Cattaneo, ‘Su lo stato dell’Irlanda nell’anno 1844’, in idem, Scritti economici, ed. A. Bertolino, 3 vols (Florence, 1956), ii, pp. 425–62; and C. Cavour, ‘Considérations sur l’état actuel de l’Irlande et sur son avenir’ [1844], in C. Pischedda and G. Talamo (eds), Tutti gli scritti di Cavour ( Turin, 1976), ii, pp. 747–811. ¹⁰⁹ G. Spini, Risorgimento e Protestanti (Naples, 1956).

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amelioration.¹¹⁰ Their fascination with Protestantism owed much to their belief in the superiority of the English national identity, of which Protestantism was an integral part, in stimulating morality and civic virtues. For the exiles the Irish question had thus to be resolved through integration and the absorption into a superior civil and economic model, rather than with the acknowledgement of the existence of an Irish nation entitled to independence. This approach to the Irish question, phrased in terms of reform and good government, and not of religious and political emancipation, remained in fact a permanent feature of Italian debate in the decades to come.¹¹¹ T H E S H O RTC O M I N G S O F E N G L I S H P O L I T I C A L L I F E Some Italian observers, although contemporaries of Foscolo, Pecchio, and Santarosa, were far less eager to praise English institutions and society. Rather than echo Whiggish interpretations of English politics or align themselves with the French doctrinaires in their enthusiasm for English liberty, they endorsed the critical remarks of English radicals and French liberals like Benjamin Constant. In reviewing Pecchio’s L’anno mille ottocento ventisei Francesco Salfi argued that English legislation and institutions ought not to be regarded as the insuperable models they had seemed to be in the seventeenth century.¹¹² That a Neapolitan intellectual who admired Filangieri’s constitutional ideas should view English ´ institutions with some scepticism is not surprising. The author of the Eloge de Filangieri was aware of Filangieri’s dislike for a constitution that was little more than a crystallization of common law and consolidated custom, and of his critique of English mixed government for its lack of a clear division of powers which left monarch and parliament in competition over the exercise of sovereignty.¹¹³ However, Salfi’s objections to English institutions were also informed by contemporary continental liberal views. His perplexity as regards the English model of liberty was due to the key role attributed to the aristocracy in both the political and the economic order. This anti-aristocratic critique was a central theme in the European liberaldemocratic intellectuals’ appreciation of contemporary England and developed certain arguments already circulating during the Napoleonic era, when the English aristocracy was described as the class leading a warmongering and greedy nation.¹¹⁴ Constant maintained that after the Glorious Revolution the ¹¹⁰ D. G. Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland (3rd edn, London and New York, 1995), pp. 138–44. ¹¹¹ Thom, ‘Great Britain and Ireland in the Thought of Carlo Cattaneo’, pp. 413–14. ¹¹² F. Salfi, ‘L’anno mille ottocento ventisei dell’Inghilterra, ETC. Pecchio, Lugano, 1827, Vanelli’, Revue encyclopédique, 39 (1828), 174–5. ¹¹³ V. Ferrone, La società giusta ed equa: Repubblicanesimo e diritti dell’uomo in Gaetano Filangieri (Rome and Bari, 2003), pp. 38–48. ¹¹⁴ A. Butti, ‘L’anglofobia nella letteratura della Cisalpina e del Regno Italico’, Archivio Storico Lombardo, 12 (1909), 429–72.


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aristocracy had for long ensured the support of the people not only through the exercise of patronage—the basis of their social influence—but also by defending the interests of the nation against the encroachment of monarchical power. However, since the last century the pact between aristocracy and the people had been sundered, when the refusal by the oligarchy to grant further political reforms had irrevocably alienated the people. Constant was convinced that the social tensions of English society would soon lead to a revolution.¹¹⁵ The economist Jean-Baptiste Say likewise explained the weaknesses and problems of the English economy in terms of the hostility of the aristocratic oligarchy governing the country towards free trade and the middle classes, and in terms of the defence of the mercantile system of the empire and of the agricultural interests against those of the nation.¹¹⁶ A similar attitude to the English constitution was shared by exiles like the Paris-based Sicilian Alfio Grassi. Grassi acknowledged, like Constant, that English commercial and industrial supremacy achieved since the Glorious Revolution had been the result of a constitutional system defending fundamental liberties.¹¹⁷ Like Say or Constant, however, Grassi criticized the English constitution for being too heavily dominated by an aristocratic oligarchy, whose influence, he thought, needed to be substantially limited. Assessing the need for political change in England in a European context, Grassi believed that the English radicals’ legitimate call for political reform could be satisfied only if all the other European powers were to adopt constitutional charters more advanced than the English. It was only through external pressure that English oligarchies, along with the continental versions, would become ‘constitutional, liberal, and more favourable to the general interests’.¹¹⁸ Grassi had no doubts that this in turn would have a positive effect on international politics, as English trade and diplomacy would no longer be directed solely to cultivating Britain’s own interests while disregarding those of other nations both inside and outside Europe.¹¹⁹ The philosophic radicals’ critical views of the English political system rarely had a direct intellectual influence on the Italian exiles. This was primarily due to the fact that most exiles there had been attracted to the country precisely because of its political system and, as discussed above, looked up to the English aristocracy as a model to imitate. Only a few of those living in England were not impervious to the lively intellectual debates questioning the electoral system, the power of the aristocracy, and even the monarchical principle. For ¹¹⁵ B. Constant, ‘De l’Angleterre’, in idem, Mélanges de littérature et de politique (Paris, 1829), pp. 28–45. ¹¹⁶ R. Whatmore, Republicanism and the French Revolution: An Intellectual History of Jean-Baptiste Say’s Political Economy (Oxford, 2000), pp. 211–12. ¹¹⁷ A. Grassi, La Sainte Alliance, Les Anglais et Les Jésuites; Leur systéme politique a` l’égard de la Grèce, des gouvernemens constitutionels et des événemens actuels (Paris, 1827), p. 275. ¹¹⁸ Ibid., p. 122. ¹¹⁹ Ibid., p. 124.

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instance, during his residence in England the former Napoleonic general Filippo de Meester found in Jeremy Bentham’s writings new arguments to support his opinion that republican and popular systems were always superior to monarchical constitutions based on privilege and the hereditary right to seats in an assembly and, with Bentham, stated that the monarch was the least useful and most expensive person in government.¹²⁰ During the run-up to the Great Reform Bill, in a pamphlet written by the Sicilian Francis Romeo, it is possible to detect the influence of discussions about reform and echoes of the radicals’ attack on hereditary peerage and the law of primogeniture.¹²¹ In his Peerage Reform, published in 1830 and dedicated to Lord William Bentinck, Romeo advocated at one and the same time the abolition of the law of primogeniture and the revision of the rules governing membership of the House of Lords.¹²² He proposed that the current peers establish clear and uncontroversial criteria for aspiring members to the House of Lords, which should be open to any citizen possessing the appropriate qualities and selected by especially appointed judges. Romeo thought that the strength of his proposal lay in the fact that merit, rather than birth, would define the country’s peerage. While maintaining the Royal Prerogative in the appointment of peers, Romeo’s goal was to preserve the existence of an upper chamber and to create closer ties between the nation and the aristocracy, to which he was hoping to impart a new identity.¹²³ These exceptions notwithstanding, by and large Benthamite radicalism did not provide Italians with the intellectual tools to analyse the English polity. The democratic exile who lived the longest in England before Mazzini, Luigi Angeloni, developed a critique of English society primarily indebted to his earlier Jacobinism and to the intellectual speculations of the Italian Enlightenment. In England Angeloni devised a theory of sovereignty designed to embody the principles of republicanism and to reject the aristocratic element in English society, a theory based on the principle of ‘force’ (‘teoria della forza’). He believed that sovereignty, as well as law and justice, were the direct result of force, whether natural or artificial, a principle he considered to be the foundation of both material and moral existence. Borrowing his materialistic conception of the world from La Mettrie, D’Holbach, and Helvétius, Angeloni’s convictions regarding the material origins of moral and political life were reinforced by the principles of phrenology he became acquainted with through the German physician Johann Spurzheim. Angeloni believed that while free institutions were the outcome of a ‘natural’ force, spontaneously organized as the will of the majority of the people, the ¹²⁰ De Meester, E’ egli possibile un governo repubblicano rappresentativo? Carte De Meester, c.2b(4)2. These ideas developed in the 1830s were published in 1848 in his Della repubblica democratico-rappresentativa, p. 17. ¹²¹ F. M. L. Thompson, ‘Land and Politics in England in the Nineteenth Century’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, fifth series, 15 (1965), 23–44. ¹²² F. Romeo, Peerage Reform (London, 1830), p. 7. ¹²³ Ibid., p. 13.


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authoritarian rule of a minority over the majority—the foundation of despotic political systems—was due to the operation of an ‘artificial’ force.¹²⁴ For Angeloni there was no doubt that the hereditary sovereignty of an aristocratic minority was the result of an artificial force, and in this respect one could hardly differentiate English oligarchic government from other authoritarian European governments.¹²⁵ Although he applauded the fact that a genuine freedom of expression existed, and observed that no monarchy in history had granted so much liberty to its people, Angeloni condemned the law of primogeniture on the basis of an Italian Enlightenment preference for small landholdings over large ones, and adopted a republican hostility to luxury and excessive inequality in wealth distribution to justify his preference for American or Swiss liberty over English aristocratic government.¹²⁶ In spite of the differences in their views, all the exiles agreed that some aspects of English legislation and institutions badly needed reform, but even the most critical recognized the high degree of freedom enjoyed by civil society in England. On the role of aristocratic power, however, the divisions between moderate and democratic liberals are all too clear. For Italian democrats, whether under the influence of contemporary European debates or as a result of their allegiance to the Italian Enlightenment tradition, liberty and aristocratic supremacy were incompatible. C A N F R E E D O M B E E X P O RT E D ? T H E E N G L I S H C O N S T I T U T I O N , F O R E I G N M O D E L S A N D I TA L I A N FREEDOM The English political system became a source of inspiration for many patriots when discussing the future of Italy as an independent country. More generally, a discussion of the merits of the various constitutional models existing outside Italy, from the American to the Spanish and French charters, whether in their 1814 or in their 1830 versions, was central to the exiles’ own political programmes for Italy.¹²⁷ According to Salvo Mastellone, the experience of exile facilitated a key intellectual process during the Risorgimento, ¹²⁴ T. Iermano, Il giacobinismo e il Risorgimento italiano: Luigi Angeloni e la teoria della forza (Naples, 1983). ¹²⁵ Angeloni, Della forza, ii, p. 183. ¹²⁶ Ibid., ii, pp. 10, 127–8, 148. Angeloni referred to R. McCulloch, ‘Disposal of Property by Will-Entails-French Law of Succession’, Edinburgh Review, 40 (1824), 350–75 to criticize his defence of the law of primogeniture. ¹²⁷ A useful list of constitutional projects is in F. Della Peruta, ‘La federazione nel dibattito risorgimentale’, in idem, Conservatori, Liberali e Democratici nel Risorgimento (Milan, 1989), pp. 309–39. On the popularity of the English constitutional model in the early ninetenth century see A. Romano (ed.), Il modello costituzionale inglese e la sua ricezione nell’area mediterranea tra la fine del 700 e la prima metà dell’800 (Milan 1998).

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namely the discussion and transfer of foreign constitutional models, and thus played a crucial role in the development of Italian political culture in the first half of the nineteenth century.¹²⁸ Indeed, as the enthusiasm for Spain, founded upon admiration for the 1812 constitution, served to demonstrate, revolutionaries belonging to the generation of 1820 had a tendency to take certain political models as symbols of their political agenda, and to idealize them. However, as I hope to show, the exiles’ admiration for foreign models was neither unthinking nor unqualified. On the contrary, exile enabled them to ponder how foreign constitutions like the English might be adapted to the specific social and political conditions of Italy, as well as to its indigenous intellectual traditions of political thought. This section considers how the exiles absorbed, reformulated and then adopted the constitutions they came to appreciate abroad. That a constitution had to reflect local historical and social peculiarities, as well as the degree of education and the development of public opinion of a country, represented a platitude in eighteenth-century sociological debate, one too universally accepted to be attributed to a single intellectual origin, although the debt to Montesquieu was plain enough. In the post-Napoleonic era, and in particular after the 1820–1 uprisings, these considerations assumed a more immediately political overtone. Indeed, the attempts to find a constitutional charter which would at the same time be consonant with conditions in the peninsula and break with the current administrative praxis reflected the exiles’ genuine wish to understand why the different constitutions introduced in Italy or proposed by the revolutionaries between 1796 and 1821 had failed to win widespread support. In the post-revolutionary period, the single most important intellectual contribution to this debate had been Vincenzo Cuoco’s Saggio Storico della Rivoluzione Napoletana del 1799 (1801), a text whose ideas continued to exert influence in the constitutional debates throughout the Restoration. The Saggio’s relevance lay in its extended discussion regarding the feasibility of constitutions which, Cuoco believed, had to be the result of historical developments, and not the expression of alleged natural rights. For Cuoco, political institutions had to reflect, and arise out of, the ‘needs of the people’, which closely depended on both the existing state of a country and on the reforms its members were prepared to entertain. This was why in 1799 in Naples the adoption of French ideas by the revolutionaries had been greeted with hostility by the majority of the population.¹²⁹ In the same years European liberal culture had further developed these themes to advance the notion that constitutions could not simply be based on abstract principles and ¹²⁸ S. Mastellone, Storia ideologica d’Europa da Sieyès a Marx (Florence, 1974), pp. 192–3. ¹²⁹ On Cuoco’s interpretations in the Restoration see A. De Francesco, ‘Il Saggio Storico e la cultura politica italiana fra Otto e Novecento’, in idem, (ed.), Vincenzo Cuoco, Saggio Storico sulla Rivoluzione di Napoli (Manduria, Bari, and Rome, 1998), pp. 9–197, at 24–43. On Cuoco’s constitutionalism, see Ferrone, La società giusta ed equa, pp. 248–83.


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rights, but were the product of history, progress and civilization, and of a given society. This view was shared by the intellectuals of Coppet and by Sismondi, whose Recherches sur les constitutions des peoples libres, unpublished but most probably known by the numerous Italian exiles of his circle, debated this issue at length.¹³⁰ It is thus no surprise that the Geneva-based exile Pellegrino Rossi, a close acquaintance of Sismondi and of the doctrinaires, fully espoused these ideas, combining them with Von Savigny’s belief that legislation was primarily the product of national history, as expressed in his articles in Annales de législation et de jurisprudence.¹³¹ Rossi, however, did not explicitly discuss the issue of the transfer of a model from one country to another. Rather, like the doctrinaires who knew and valued his ideas, he was concerned with the problem of granting constitutions and legislation that ensured general stability and freedom to European societies, combining progress and reform with social peace. In short, Rossi believed that constitutional orders ought to reflect historical progress and development rather than stem from revolutionary change.¹³² Among the exiles, it was Ugo Foscolo who was most acerbic in his denunciation of those who unthinkingly adopted foreign political models for Italy. In his only concrete attempt to write a constitutional charter while in exile, that drafted for the Ionian Islands, Foscolo claimed that theoretical constitutions—as opposed to those based on the experience and the mores of the nation—could thrive only where ‘ultimate civilization’ had been attained, as had been the case in revolutionary France or in the United States of America.¹³³ While enthusiastically reporting on English politics, Foscolo devoted much of his time to studying relations between Italian society and its constitutions in both the recent and the remote past. The relationship between the failure of the Neapolitan republic and its constitution was central to his article on the Neapolitan revolution of 1799, which appeared in the New Monthly Magazine in 1821. Given the timing of its publication, the article also represented an oblique comment on the recent revolutions of Italy. Although Foscolo did not wholly accept Vincenzo Cuoco’s interpretation of the historical events surrounding the fall of the republic, his argument nonetheless owed much to the famed Saggio Storico. Foscolo in fact endorsed Cuoco’s idea that a constitution would fail and be greeted with hostility by the majority of the population if it endorsed abstract principles which were totally alien to the ¹³⁰ J. C. L. Sismondi, Recherches sur les constitutions des peuples libres, introduction by M. Minerbi (Geneva, 1965). ¹³¹ A venture he had launched in collaboration with Sismondi and Etienne Dumont. See Rossi, ‘Du gouvernement parlamentaire’, and ‘De l’ e´tude du droit’, in idem, Mélanges, ii, pp. 134–200 and pp. 290–407. On Rossi and Sismondi see L. Lacché, ‘ ‘‘All’antica sua patria’’. Pellegrino Rossi e Simonde de Sismondi: Relazioni intellettuali fra Ginevra e la Toscana’, in F. Sofia (ed.), Sismondi e la civiltà toscana (Florence, 2001), 51–91. ¹³² On Rossi and the doctrinaires see P. Rosanvallon, La monarchie impossibile: Les Chartes de 1814 et de 1830 (Paris, 1994), pp. 162–4. ¹³³ Foscolo, ‘Stato politico’, pp. 26–9.

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values of the society in question.¹³⁴ For Foscolo, the dominant political culture of the Italians was not that of the Neapolitan democrats, who had borrowed theoretical ideas of freedom and equality from the French Revolution, but a widespread form of Machiavellism, which made them inherently distrustful of power and its objectives, including that of the French ‘liberators’.¹³⁵ Foscolo’s implicit message to his English readership and to his fellow exiles involved in the 1821 uprisings was that once more the Italian patriots had failed to speak a language which could be understood by the rest of the population. Once more the distance between the liberals and the general population had resulted in a political disaster. In his Discorso sul testo della Commedia di Dante, published in London in 1825, Foscolo’s expressed his dismay at the naivety of the Romantics’ revolutionary ventures, and openly condemned their efforts to import foreign constitutions into Italy. Foscolo observed that the Romantics’ faith in progress and in the power of public opinion were ineffectual in the face of the irrational forces dominating history. The 1821 revolutions had once more demonstrated that theoretical freedom was unlikely to be turned into reality.¹³⁶ By then, Foscolo’s disinterest in the Romantics’ journalistic activities had turned to outright hostility and to a sarcastic dismissal of the ideological tenets of Il Conciliatore, whose pages he said in 1824 in the European Review had been found to be ‘very dull by the generality of readers’. His political and intellectual distance from the Romantic exiles had culminated in a dramatic breach, primarily due to Foscolo’s stormy and irascible personality.¹³⁷ Italian history itself, however, provided direct evidence for the fact that freedom could thrive when institutions catered to the needs and expectations of local societies, and that constitutions could survive unchallenged when popular support persisted. Foscolo’s writings in exile were designed to show that there had once been, and perhaps there could again be, an ‘Italian route to freedom’. For Foscolo important lessons could be drawn from the history of the republican institutions of Venice, lessons still relevant to contemporary debates on national constitutional freedom and patriotism. Scrutiny of Foscolo’s ‘History of the Democratical Constitution of Venice’, published in the Edinburgh Review in 1827, reveals his concern to reassess the Italian constitutional tradition.¹³⁸ ¹³⁴ Unlike Cuoco, however, in his interpretation of the causes for the defeat of the revolution, he also blamed the French government and the radical overthrow of every principle of international law. Foscolo, ‘An Account of the Revolution in Naples’ in EN, 13, II, p. 45. On Foscolo’s debt to Cuoco see Del Vento, ‘Una nuova ‘‘eloquenza popolare’’ ’. ¹³⁵ Foscolo, ‘An Account of the Revolution’, pp. 19–20. ¹³⁶ ‘Discorso sul testo della Commedia di Dante’ [1825], in EN, 9, pp. 180–2. ¹³⁷ See his ‘Italian Periodical Literature’, in EN, 11, II, 327–66, at p. 363. On Foscolo and the Conciliatore see now M. A. Terzoli, ‘Lettere dall’Inghilterra. Foscolo e il gruppo del ‘Conciliatore’’, in Barbarisi and Cadioli (eds) Idee e Figure del ‘Conciliatore’, pp. 363–86; on the end of the friendship between Foscolo and his fellow exiles in London see G. Pecchio, Vita di Ugo Foscolo [1830], ed. G. Nicoletti (Milan, 1974); pp. 321–2. ¹³⁸ Foscolo, ‘History of the Democratical Constitution of Venice’[1827], in EN, 12, pp. 472–561. On Foscolo’s reassessment of the history of Venice see now X. Tabet, ‘Ugo


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The Venetian constitution of the early centuries of the republic described by Foscolo had some ‘liberal qualities’, as it had gradually developed an institutional system of checks and balances guaranteeing the separation of the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary, and had ensured religious tolerance.¹³⁹ A strong anti-aristocratic stance dominates his reconstruction of the political and institutional life of the city. Although after the ‘serrata del Gran Consiglio’ of 1300, which marked the beginning of aristocratic control over every aspect of Venetian political life, Venetian history could be described as the slow but steady decline of the republic, the Venetian constitution retained remarkable qualities which, in Foscolo’s judgement, allowed it to endure until the French invasion.¹⁴⁰ However, what ultimately ensured the survival of the aristocratic republic for so long was the support it had among the poorest citizens of Venice, who venerated the constitution, regarded ‘it as the Palladium of their internal safety and tranquillity, and of the independence of their country’, and believed they enjoyed the highest possible degree of freedom.¹⁴¹ Foscolo’s extended discussion of the constitutional history of Italy and his criticism of his fellow exiles were not ignored by the former Lombard and Neapolitan revolutionary leadership. But most of Foscolo’s friends were convinced that reverting to foreign models in 1821 had not been a source of weakness for the revolutionary movement, since modernity and progress could only have come from abroad. For Pecchio, Foscolo’s belief that in 1821 the revolutionaries had made a mistake in accepting a foreign constitution was ‘a totally absurd judgement’.¹⁴² For the Romantics, pre-revolutionary Venice did not represent a useful political model for contemporary Italy.¹⁴³ As for the causes of the failure of the Revolution in Naples, the Neapolitan exiles, too, disagreed with Foscolo’s interpretation. For Guglielmo Pepe the greatest threat to the revolution had not been its democratic constitution, but rather the landowners’ support for the monarchical principle and their alliance with the clergy, both factors that served to undermine the stability of the revolutionary government.¹⁴⁴ Pepe conceded that what further weakened the revolution was the fact that the government failed to implement those reforms which were relevant to the population. He was also ready to endorse Cuoco’s view that ‘theories are never interesting to the people’.¹⁴⁵ However, Pepe refused to draw a Foscolo, des désillusions italiennes a` la Venise retrouvée’, Chroniques italiennes, 61 (2000), 127–47; C. Del Vento, ‘Foscolo, Daru et le mythe de la ‘‘Venise démocratique’’ ’, in Del Vento and X. Tabet (eds), Le mythe de Venise au xix siècle (Caen, 2006), pp. 47–60. ¹³⁹ Ibid., pp. 488–89, 501, 541. ¹⁴⁰ Foscolo, ‘History of the Democratical Constitution’, p. 549; Foscolo, ‘Memoirs of Casanova’ [1827], EN, 12, pp. 564–609. ¹⁴¹ Foscolo, ‘Memoirs of Casanova’, p. 608. ¹⁴² Pecchio, Vita di Ugo Foscolo, pp. 352–3. ¹⁴³ Pellico, ‘Histoire de la République de Venise par P. Daru’, Il Conciliatore, iii, p. 219. ¹⁴⁴ G. Pepe, ‘The Non-Establishment of Liberty in Spain, Naples, Portugal, and Piedmont, Explained’, The Pamphleteer, 24 (1824), 238. ¹⁴⁵ Ibid., 264.

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parallel between 1799 and 1820, and made the telling observation that the popular hostility to the revolution displayed in 1799 had not been repeated in 1820, when the Neapolitans had shown themselves to be ‘completely ripe for liberty’.¹⁴⁶ Despite this fundamental disagreement between Foscolo and the rest of the exile community on the existence or otherwise of the conditions required for the introduction of new regimes in Italy in 1820, most of the exiles were ready to agree on the need to modify the foreign models, rather than simply transposing them, and to bear in mind the specific nature of the society in question. For the admirers of England, its bicameral representative system had the advantage over monocameral democratic constitutions of representing and associating all social interests, from those of ordinary citizens to those of the upper classes, from the industrial bourgeoisie to the landed aristocracy, thus reflecting the complexity and variety of society and also its progressive development as an organic whole. This idea of a constitution which mirrored the ‘material’ constitution of society obviously favoured a moderate reformist agenda over radical social engineering and institutional transformations. It was based on a particular notion of freedom, shared with the docrinaires and Sismondi, namely the freedom of the different elements of society from the encroachment of the state. As Pellegrino Rossi had stated, a representative system of this kind represented ‘all social interest, impress[ed] on laws a real character of nationality, and associate[d] the public with the work of the government, without putting the existence of the social order in danger’.¹⁴⁷ However, even the most fervent Anglophiles and supporters of its bicameral system did not believe that the English system could be adopted wholesale in Italy.¹⁴⁸ Indeed, if one considers what the exiles wrote about freedom and constitutions, the view of later moderates like Spaventa, namely that their political thought was ‘abstract’, does not stand up to scrutiny. Gugliemo Paladini’s and Giuseppe Pecchio’s constitutional projects are a case in point. For Paladini, a Neapolitan lawyer with an aristocratic background, the failure of the 1820–1 revolution in Naples had been due to the excessively democratic nature of the Spanish constitution adopted by the revolutionaries, which the Sicilian aristocracy had deplored. For this reason, only a constitutional charter along English lines, accommodating the legitimate ambitions of the aristocracy, would have any chance of succeeding in the future in Naples.¹⁴⁹ Nonetheless, while ¹⁴⁶ Ibid., 246. ¹⁴⁷ Rossi, ‘Du gouvernement parlamentaire’, pp. 164–5. On this aspect of Rossi’s understanding of freedom see L. Lacché, ‘ ‘‘All’antica sua patria’’. Pellegrino Rossi e Simonde de Sismondi’. On the idea of representation of interests in Sismondi and the doctrinaires see Jaume, L’individu éffacé, pp. 165–6. ¹⁴⁸ Santarosa to Sismondi, in Santarosa, Lettere, ed. Olmo, p. 426. ¹⁴⁹ G. Paladini, Project of a New Social Compact, For the State of the Two Scilies, in Particular, But Adapted for Italy, at Large, or Progetto di un nuovo patto sociale per lo Regno delle Due Sicilie, non men che per l’Italia tutta, 2 vols (London, 1827), i, pp. 8.


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admitting that ‘the English constitution is far superior to any other system of Government’, Paladini was also quick to add that ‘the temperament of the Sicilians’ could not be likened to the manners of the English people, ‘nor [. . .] do the physical and moral conditions of Italy permit it to avail itself of all the principles of the English constitution’.¹⁵⁰ Indeed, the fundamental difference between the English and the Neapolitans (or the Italians in general) concerned the development of a public spirit which made the English more committed to the defence of freedom and patriotism, and the Italians more likely to fall victim to the abuse of power. In order to prevent this, Paladini suggested various adjustments to the royal prerogatives, which he believed had to be more limited in Italy than in England, where freedom was such that the king no longer represented a threat to the people. Once again mindful of the lessons learned in 1821, for Italy Paladini suggested limits to the royal veto, the inviolability of the king being limited to his person only, and proposed that the right of nomination of new peers be shared with the nobility.¹⁵¹ The Italian House of Lords, or Camera dei Seniori, was also bound to be different from the English, because of the peculiar features of nobility of the kingdom, more numerous and with less landed property than its English counterpart. Paladini thus suggested introducing a system of rotation by which the nobility would by turns have access to the Upper House.¹⁵² In addition, he was convinced that a new constitution had to avoid the defects of the English system, in particular with regard to its widely discredited electoral process, and to certain aspects of its judicial system, which prevented the easy and free access to justice by the poor.¹⁵³ Even an Anglophile like Pecchio maintained that, as much as England was ‘the warehouse of modern civilization’, its institutions could not be slavishly imitated, but should be studied ‘as one studies Roman jurisprudence’.¹⁵⁴ Indeed, the inspiration of Great Britain is apparent in the national institutions delineated for an Italian federation discussed by Pecchio in his Catechismo Italiano (1830), in which he went on to advocate an Upper Chamber, or Camera dei Pari with noblemen ‘most illustrious for noble deeds and philanthropic pursuits’ and a House of Commons for the citizens ‘most noble for science, probity and independence’, according to the model of aristocracy of merit advanced by French liberals. However, Pecchio was adamant that the best possible constitution for Italy had to emerge through discussion in a Constituent Assembly between deputies from all the Italian provinces.¹⁵⁵ In addition, Pecchio was proud to refer to a local historical tradition that might be combined with English constitutional structures. He envisaged a national way of handling local affairs and lauded the Lombard local administrative units introduced by Empress Maria Theresa ¹⁵⁰ Paladini, Project, i, p. 17. ¹⁵¹ Ibid., i, pp. 122–4. ¹⁵² Ibid., i, pp. 46–8. ¹⁵³ Ibid., i, pp. 2, 3, 67. ¹⁵⁴ Pecchio, L’anno 1826 dell’Inghilterra [1827], in SP, p. 326. ¹⁵⁵ Pecchio, Catechismo Italiano [1830], in SP, p. 564.

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in 1755. This system was based on assemblies of landowners in charge of the local administration, called Convocati, whose duties included the collection of taxes on the basis of the land register, the famous Catasto.¹⁵⁶ In Pecchio’s words, this system was the Lombard ‘Magna Carta’.¹⁵⁷ The independence of the towns and local communities was the feature of the English system that, in Pecchio’s opinion, could also be found in the Lombard model.¹⁵⁸ Besides having institutions worth preserving, Italy also possessed an important tradition of constitutional thought. From the point of view of the exiled revolutionaries, the vindication of a ‘national’ constitutional tradition in the 1820s and 1830s had the benefit both of pointing out an Italian—or Neapolitan—path to liberalism, and of calling upon intellectuals better acquainted with the problems of Italian society than were foreigners.¹⁵⁹ This was true also of democratic exiles like Salfi and Marochetti, who disliked the English constitution. In this ´ respect, Francesco Salfi’s Eloge de Gaetano Filangieri, published in 1822 along with Benjamin Constant’s Commentaire sur l’ouvrage de Filangieri, constitutes an exceptionally interesting document. Salfi mounted a passionate defence of Filangieri’s ideas precisely when Constant was claiming that the Neapolitan thinker could no longer furnish a modern polity with any useful solutions.¹⁶⁰ Constant viewed Filangieri’s faith in enlightened reformism as utopian, and disapproved of his excessive trust in the authorities’ ability to limit their own powers, a task that in Constant’s opinion only representative bodies, with the support of a written constitution, could perform. In short, Constant’s attack on Filangieri highlighted the distance between liberal constitutionalism and the culture of the Enlightenment, as Filangieri’s legal thought did not foresee a clear distinction between ‘ordinary’ legislation and institutional issues relating to the division of powers, a distinction normally guaranteed by a constitution in the post-revolutionary era.¹⁶¹ Undoubtedly, Salfi was impelled by patriotic fervour to put Filangieri’s Scienza della Legislazione back on the stage of European legal doctrine. Salfi, emphasizing Filangieri’s achievements where Montesquieu had failed, aimed to place the Italian intellectual tradition at the core of European cultural heritage.¹⁶² Yet Salfi also ¹⁵⁶ Capra, ‘Il Settecento’, in D. Sella-Capra, Il Ducato di Milano dal 1535 al 1796 ( Turin, 1984), pp. 319–23. ¹⁵⁷ Pecchio, Storia dell’economia pubblica in Italia [1829], ed. G. M. Gaspari (Varese, 1992), p. 91. ¹⁵⁸ Ibid., pp. 90–1. ¹⁵⁹ See, for instance, F. Dal Pozzo, Essai sur les anciennes assemblées nationales de la Savoie, du Piémont, et des pays qui y sont ou furent annexés (Paris and Geneva, 1829), pp. 192–3, where the Piedmontese exile praised the eminently liberal nature of the 1430 legal codes of the Duke of Savoy Amedeo VIII, who always respected the rights of the nation. ¹⁶⁰ On the dispute see now Ferrone, La società giusta ed equa, pp. 284 and ff. ¹⁶¹ Ibid., pp. 298–314. On Constant’s criticism of Filangieri see also P. Cordey, ‘Benjamin Constant, Gaetano Filangieri et la ‘‘science de la législation’’ ’, Revue européenne des sciences sociales, 18 (1980), 55–79. ´ ¹⁶² Salfi, ‘Eloge de Gaetano Filangieri’, in Oeuvres de G. Filangieri, 6 vols (Paris, 1822), i, p. xxxi.


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hoped to prove that Filangieri’s text had fostered a prominent, original, and ‘modern’ school of legal studies, whose contribution was still of inestimable importance to contemporary constitutionalism. He maintained that although Filangieri never devoted a specific part of his work to discussing the best possible constitution, he did not believe that good legislation could exist under any type of government, and that his legislative system implied the existence of a constitution.¹⁶³ As Vincenzo Ferrone has recently pointed out, Salfi’s interpretation differed from that of the earlier biographers, as he was the first to depict Filangieri as a sincere democrat, an admirer of the American republic hostile to all forms of despotism.¹⁶⁴ More importantly, Salfi was keen to remind his readers that Filangieri’s intellectual legacy had been further developed by his pupils, and his teachings integrated into the constitutional debate flourishing in the period immediately preceding the revolutionary experiment of 1799. Of this phase Mario Pagano’s Saggi Politici and his Progetto di costituzione della Repubblica Napoletana represented the most conspicuous intellectual achievements. For Salfi the 1821 Italian revolutions bore witness to the influence of Filangieri’s ideas on Italian public opinion.¹⁶⁵ In spite of Constant’s criticism, Filangieri’s teachings were not simply forgotten by the exiles. Writing in the 1830s, GianBattista Marochetti was keen to salvage some aspects of Neapolitan constitutional thought from oblivion and to integrate them into his constitution for Italy, which was chiefly inspired by the 1830 French charter. Marochetti in fact fully espoused the idea of a ‘monarchie républicaine’, a concept which had been advanced by Lafayette during the July Revolution, and which, as Marochetti saw it, under Louis-Philippe’s rule, was designed to reconcile monarchical rule with the existence of republican institutions.¹⁶⁶ For Marochetti, this idea of a constitutional monarchy embracing the key principles of republicanism was particularly suited to Italy, where the establishment of a republic was not conceivable under current conditions.¹⁶⁷ However, it was precisely a republican institution first advocated by Filangieri that, in Marochetti’s view, would address the current corruption of manners in Italy. In proposing to introduce a ‘College of the Censors’, an institution modelled on the example of the Roman Republic and aimed at turning the people into citizens, he hoped to preserve and foster public morality.¹⁶⁸ In conclusion, what the constitutional ideas of both democratic and moderate exiles suggest is that, while they were keen to justify the political choices ¹⁶³ Ibid., p. xcj. ¹⁶⁴ Ferrone, La società giusta ed equa, p. 291. ´ ¹⁶⁵ Salfi, ‘Eloge’, pp. cxxvij–cxxviij. ¹⁶⁶ G. B. Marochetti, L’Italie, ce qu’elle doit faire pour figurer enfin parmi les nations indépendantes et libres (Paris, 1837), pp. 9–11, 30, 48–49. ¹⁶⁷ Ibid., pp. 188. On Lafayette’s ‘Monarchie Republicaine’ see L. Kramer, Lafayette in Two Worlds: Public Cultures and Personal Identities in an Age of Revolutions (Chapel Hill and London, 1996), pp. 239–243; and A. B. Spitzer. ‘La Repubblica sotterranea’, in F. Furet and M. Ozouf (eds), L’idea di repubblica nell’Europa moderna (Rome and Bari, 1993), pp. 361–88. ¹⁶⁸ Marochetti, L’Italie, p. 151, n.1. On the ‘Collegio’ see Ferrone, La società giusta ed equa, p. 239.

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they had made during the 1820–1 revolutions, in their reflections between the 1820s and 1830s they all agreed on the need to adapt foreign models to the conditions of Italian society, and to the national legal and administrative traditions. Rather than a simple transfer of foreign examples, the constitutional debates of the political emigration suggest that while exile fostered serious reflection on how to modernize Italy in the light of the most advanced existing institutional models, it almost invariably produced new, composite proposals in which elements of the local traditions were reconciled with those of the much admired English, American, or French institutions, constitutions or schools of thought.

C O N C LU S I O N S : E X I L E L I B E R A L I S M , A N G LO PH I L I A , A N D T H E R I S O RG I M E N TO The views of the exiles provide additional evidence of the importance of England to the development of continental liberalism, and also confirmed the belief among European liberals that its unique institutions and social conditions made their transfer to the continent impossible. In addition, for most of the exiles, admiration for the English political model did not imply outright rejection of the revolutionary and Napoleonic experiences in Italy. The Italian generation of 1821 was preoccupied with defending the revolutionary option, and keen to justify as legitimate the uprisings undertaken in the name of the people without wishing to grant full political rights to the whole population. Admittedly, the arch-conservative Carlo Botta was adamant that foreign constitutions should not be imitated, and in the wake of Cuoco reckoned that any attempts to introduce French freedom in Italy were doomed to fail. Although he had formerly been a Jacobin, in his Storia d’Italia dal 1786 al 1814 (1824) Botta ended up praising ‘the ancient Italian wisdom’ he found in the prerevolutionary constitutions of the Italian republics, and suggested that a revised version of them, rather than those emanating from other European countries, would be better suited to the character of contemporary Italian societies.¹⁶⁹ However, most of the exiles, unlike Botta, did not wish to revert to prerevolutionary constitutional systems. The decentralization and local autonomy they lauded in Britain did not entail the rejection of each and every aspect of Napoleon’s legal and administrative reforms. The extent to which the exiles continued to defend the achievements of the Napoleonic era will be discussed in the next chapters at greater length. For the time being, it is sufficient ¹⁶⁹ C. Botta, Storia d’Italia dal 1786 al 1814 [1824], 4 vols (Italia, 1826), iv, pp. 501–2. Yet Botta’s views were challenged by several exiles like Pecchio (Vita di Ugo Foscolo, pp. 355, 369.) and G. Aceto, Della Sicilia e dei suoi rapporti con l’Inghilterra nell’epoca della Costituzione del 1812 [1827] (Palermo, 1970), pp. 134–6.


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to say that even the staunchest Anglophiles, like the doctrinaires, did not wish to re-establish the right of primogeniture abolished by Napoleon, and, influenced as they were by Enlightenment ideas, opposed excessive concentrations of landed property. Their discussion of the Irish question testifies to their continuing endorsement of the manner in which the Napoleonic regime had handled relations with the Church. In addition, in spite of their admiration for the English aristocracy, many moderates remained sceptical about the possibility of turning the Italian aristocracy into an effective, disinterested ruling class like its English counterpart. While Santarosa claimed that at least a portion of Italy’s aristocracy was liberal and sided with the people, Foscolo and Pecchio remained more pessimistic about that caste’s commitment to a national project.¹⁷⁰ Exile Anglophilia does not lend any credence to the view that early Italian liberalism was backward, but rather demonstrates the extent to which it was conversant with the views of the French doctrinaires and of English philosophical Whiggism, combined in a highly original fashion with the ideas of the Italian Enlightenment and of the civic humanist tradition. Indeed, the exiles’ idea of representation as a reflection of the social order and as representation of interests was similar to that of the doctrinaires, whose ‘liberalism of the elites’, to employ a phrase coined by Lucien Jaume, aimed primarily at protecting the privileges of a social group, and rejected the idea of freedom as an attribute of the individual. Furthermore, the exiles saw constitutions as a reflection of historical developments and social conditions, welcoming the reforms needed to accommodate social change precipitated by commercialization. This liberalism may not have been entirely modern, yet it did not represent an ‘Italian exception’. As Jaume has demonstrated, it was dominant in France in the first half of the nineteenth century. However, in other respects the liberalism and constitutionalism of the exiles was closer to the liberalism advanced by Constant, which put the individual’s choices and judgement at the centre of its concerns, took individual rights as the starting point of its theory of sovereignty and representation, and was thus decidedly modern.¹⁷¹ Indeed, the exiles continued to defend the right to rise up against a monarch, and unreservedly adopted the idea of national sovereignty dismissed by the French doctrinaires. There is no trace among them of the doctrinaires’ notion of sovereignty as ‘sovereignty of the reason’, a quasi-spiritual entity granted by God and spread through society. This fundamentally authoritarian idea had been devised by Guizot to counter Rousseau’s ‘dangerous’ conceptualisation of the volonté générale and to protect the political rights of the elites, which the ¹⁷⁰ Santarosa, ‘On the Piedmontese Revolution’, The Pamphleteer, 19 (1822) (but first published in 1821), 10–77, p. 26; Pecchio to Filippo Ugoni, 17 Sept. 1833, in P. Guerrini, ‘Il carteggio degli Ugoni’, in I cospiratori bresciani del ’21 nel primo centenario dei loro processi (Brescia, 1924), pp. 369–552, at p. 490. ¹⁷¹ On the differences between the two liberalisms see Jaume, L’individu éffacé, pp. 119–28, 164–9.

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doctrinaires promoted along with the defence of the principle of legitimacy.¹⁷² An attachment to the post-revolutionary notion of sovereignty can be found not only among democratic exiles like Pepe, Salfi, Angeloni, and Marochetti, who described the principle of sovereignty of the doctrinaires as a ‘hybrid, faulty and illogical system’, but also among the moderate and Anglophile exiles.¹⁷³ Pecchio dismissed the French doctrinaires as ‘some sort of Capuchin theologians, coward, sophist, ambitious’.¹⁷⁴ Foscolo continued to describe himself in 1818, as ‘a pupil of the revolution’.¹⁷⁵ Secondly, the exiles understood constitutions not only as reflections of the social order but also as legal devices to protect individual and universal rights. In this respect, Santarosa’s critique of Rousseau’s idea of general will is revealing. He argued that individual rights, ‘the most precious portion of freedom’, had to be protected from the arbitrary power of the majority, an issue on which, in his judgement, Rousseau had failed to provide a satisfactory solution. In his criticism of Rousseau Santarosa sided with Constant and not with the doctrinaires, who condemned the citizen of Geneva for not understanding the importance of social interests and for advancing an anarchic individualism.¹⁷⁶ In conclusion, the exiles’ moderate liberalism and constitutionalism was based on an eclectic understanding of freedom, and on a combination of modern and more conservative ideas, combining as it did support for the idea of national sovereignty, and the protection of individual rights with the defence of the interests of privileged bodies in society. However, it did not simply paraphrase pre-revolutionary ideas or aspire to return to a pre-revolutionary social order. The 1830 Revolution in France and the introduction of a new constitution had a profound impact on the political culture of the Italian diaspora, and affected the way in which the English constitution was viewed by Italians. Indeed, marking as it did an ambiguous transition from the old model of mixed government to one based on the sovereignty of the nation, its political significance became the object of some controversy. Democratic or conservative liberals advanced conflicting interpretations. Almost all agreed, however, that it was superior to the English.¹⁷⁷ Pellegrino Rossi can be taken as an example of the way in which the new constitution affected the way in which English freedom was viewed by Italian, ¹⁷² Ibid., pp. 125–30. Craiutu, however, defends the liberal nature of such definition. See his Liberalism under Siege, pp. 123–147. ¹⁷³ Marochetti, L’Italie, p. 233. ¹⁷⁴ Pecchio to Panizzi, Paris 2 June 1831, in Fagan (ed.), Lettere, p. 104. See also M. Palmieri di Miccichè, A chacun selon sa capacité selon ses oeuvres, ou le faux doctrinaire et le libéral (Paris, 1831). ¹⁷⁵ J. C. Hobhouse, Essay on the Present Literature of Italy (London, 1818), p. 481. ¹⁷⁶ Santarosa to Cousin, 1822, in Santarosa, Lettere, ed. Olmo, p. 266. ¹⁷⁷ P. Pasquino, ‘Sur la théorie constitutionnelle de la monarchie de Julliet’, in M. Valensise (ed.), François Guizot et la culture politique de son temps (Paris, 1991), 111–28; Rosanvallon, La Monarchie impossibile, pp. 169–70, 75–6.


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and more generally, continental liberals. In his lectures on constitutional right delivered in the mid-1830s in Paris, while Rossi recognized the importance of English constitutional history in the establishment of representative government he praised France for having introduced equality before the law, which made its constitution superior to the English.¹⁷⁸ For this reason the French Upper House was far superior to its English equivalent: whereas the members of the former were true representatives of the nation and had no hereditary privileges, in England an aristocracy of feudal origins sat in the House just to represent itself and its interests, not those of the nation.¹⁷⁹ Admittedly, this recognition of the superiority of the French charter did not prevent some of the most conservative of the Italian moderates, Balbo among them, from praising the English constitution as a product of history which represented the interests of the social elites and was not based on any revolutionary notion of sovereignty. Balbo, like the French aristocratic liberals, found in England the concrete example of a country under aristocratic political leadership. Unlike the exiles, he was nostalgic for an aristocracy based not on merit, but exclusively on landownership, and rejected the notion of a noblesse commerçante.¹⁸⁰ Others, like Rossi or Cavour, offered a less conservative analysis of English politics, and did not reject the more modern understanding of representation evinced by the French charters. Whatever differences of opinion may have divided Italian patriots in this regard, many of the ideas and observations first developed by the exiles in England continued to set the tone of Risorgimento Anglophilia in the following decades. To start with, Italian moderates like Balbo, d’Azeglio, and Cavour continued to admire English aristocrats as the incarnation of superior civic virtues, steadfast attachment to the public good and the willing subordination of private interest to the law. Without wishing to introduce in Italy a hereditary House of Lords and the law of primogeniture, they considered the English aristocracy to be a model for the Italian upper classes. In addition, they were much impressed by the role played by public opinion in mediating between people’s expectations and government, and valued its power to hold a government to account. Like the exiles, they envied the continuous ability of the country to reform itself and accommodate change with the consensus of the elites and the participation of the population, proof of a degree of political maturity hard to imagine in the Italian case.¹⁸¹ In Cavour’s own words, because ¹⁷⁸ P. Rossi, Cours de droit Constitutionnel [1835–7], 2 vols (Paris, 1866), i, pp. lxxiii, lxxiv. ¹⁷⁹ Ibid., ii, pp. 57, 61. ¹⁸⁰ C. Balbo, Della Monarchia rappresentativa in Italia (Florence, 1857), pp. 257–63. Idem, Pensieri ed esempii [1832–3] (Florence, 1854), p. 96. ¹⁸¹ Balbo Pensieri, pp. 328–30; M. d’Azeglio, ‘Degli ultimi casi di Romagna’ [1846], and ‘Dei nobili in Italia e delle opinioni italiane’ [1847], both in M. de Rubris (ed.), M. d’Azeglio, Scritti e discorsi politici, 3 vols (Florence, 1938), pp. 72–4, 210–11; C. Cavour, ‘La riforma del senato’ [1848], and ‘La morte di Robert Peel’ [1850], in C. Pischedda and G. Talamo (eds), Tutti gli scritti di Camillo Cavour, iii, pp. 1248–9, 1555.

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of its ability to protect individual liberty, freedom of the press, right of assembly and that of petition, England was ‘the freest country in Europe’.¹⁸² Finally, the moderate liberals’ understanding of parties and party politics still owed much to the Machiavellian tradition. Although some were more critical of parties than others, Italian liberals continued to elaborate on the distinction first made by Pecchio and Foscolo between parties, beneficial to freedom in a country like England, and factions, which could destabilise a polity and have adverse effects on patriotism.¹⁸³ In the spirit of the exiles’ first observations, French liberal ideas and the republican debate on civil discord would continue to mark Risorgimento views on England in the decades to come. ¹⁸² Cavour, ‘Cartismo e libertà politica in Inghilterra’ [1848], in Tutti gli scritti, iii, p. 1176. ¹⁸³ E. Ricotti, Breve storia della costituzione inglese ( Turin, 1871), pp. 432–3; Balbo, Sommario della storia d’Italia alle origini fino ai nostri giorni [1846] (Sesto San Giovanni, 1934), p. 193.

7 Assessing English Commercial Society I N T RO D U C T I O N In the early nineteenth century there was no dispute about the astonishing commercial and industrial superiority of England over any other country in the world. Although the gap between the English economy and other European national economies may have been overestimated on the continent, England undoubtedly emerged from the Napoleonic period as the world economic leader, and the rest of Europe lagged behind her in terms of technological development.¹ The points at issue among continental observers were the origins of such undisputed primacy, the consequences of a model of economic development based on commerce and mechanization for society, and whether such a model was desirable for Europe.² Admittedly, the economic depression following the fall of Napoleon in Europe, and the recurring commercial crises that affected increasingly globalized markets of commodities, raised serious doubts as to the real viability of its unrivalled model of economic progress. For instance, in 1826, a glut in the American commodity market precipitated a commercial and financial crisis linked to the rapid development of British trade with the New World, and to reckless speculation and easy investment, which came to an abrupt halt between the end of 1825 and the beginning of the following year.³ Falling wages and prices, high unemployment, widespread poverty, workers’ riots, and social unrest (which culminated in the battle of Peterloo in 1819) were also temporary consequences or, some said, permanent features of English progress that caused disquiet among continental observers in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars. ¹ F. Crouzet, ‘Western Europe and Grand Britain: ‘‘Catching Up’’ in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century’, in idem, Britain Ascendant: Comparative Studies in Franco-British Economic Thought (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 341–84. On the features of the English economy in the period see also D. S. Landes, The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present (Cambridge, 1969). ² On the concept of commercial society see I. Hont and M. Ignatieff (eds), Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1983). ³ F. G. Dawson, The First Latin American Debt Crisis: The City of London and the 1822–25 Loan Bubble (New Haven and London, 1990).

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In spite of the gloomy predictions fostered by Malthus’s population theories, and Ricardo’s warnings about the possibilities of reaching a stationary status as a result of decreasing returns on marginal lands, political economy seemed to provide all the tools required to explain England’s economic superiority, and even to account for the temporary nature of the crisis which had hit the economy in 1826.⁴ However, European and English economists were divided on the causes of commercial crises. Sismondi, supported by Malthus, believed that overproduction and gluts could easily arise from the development of an industrial sector whose production was boosted by mechanization and the extension of markets beyond national boundaries, until Europe’s own needs were exceeded. Mechanization was, therefore, ultimately responsible for unemployment.⁵ Yet David Ricardo, Ramsay McCulloch and most of the English economists were more sanguine about the capacity of commercial societies to recover and were convinced of the temporary nature of such setbacks. Their conviction was based on Jean-Baptiste Say’s belief, expounded in his Traité d’économie politique, that production itself automatically created a corresponding consumption, so that therefore any commercial crisis resulted from exogenous causes (natural and political disasters, government blunders) affecting the allocation of resources only in specific sectors. On other occasions economic fluctuations occurred when production was not distributed according to the needs of the population. For Say, however, a general glut was an impossibility.⁶ In the 1820s, when McCulloch and Nassau Senior celebrated the great achievements of England’s industrial progress and commercial hegemony as the result of a set of ‘natural laws’, British political economy seemed to guarantee that, with the right legislative framework, there was unlimited potential for growth, and that even poverty might be eradicated. On the continent, scepticism about the advantages of an excessive commercialization of the economy, and concerns about the negative impact of industrial growth on society were more widespread than in the British isles. While evaluations of the advantages and drawbacks of the English model of development and an appreciation of the heuristic qualities of political economy as a science went hand in hand, continental observers also continued to adopt other theoretical tools to interpret English progress. In England political economy had become the dominant social science to account for and advocate economic progress; in France or Italy, however, other intellectual traditions or newly created ideological languages were employed both to celebrate and to criticize English commercial society. In France, Belgium, and Italy, the ideology of industrialism provided the intellectual tools to advocate the imitation of the English model of development, ⁴ D. Winch, Riches and Poverty: An Intellectual History of Political Economy in Britain 1750–1834 (Cambridge, 1996). ⁵ J. C. L. Sismondi, Nouveaux principes d’économie politique, 2 vols (Paris, 1819), i, pp. 79, 80, 338–41. ⁶ On this debate see Winch, Riches and Poverty, pp. 358–65.

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and to inculcate a set of moral values ensuring that France or Italy would eventually catch up with England and abandon traditional modes of production in order to become industrial and commercial powers. In the post-Napoleonic era writers like Charles Dupin, Charles Dunoyer, Charles Comte, and Melchiorre Gioja tended to replace emphasis on civic virtues with the claim that productivity and industriousness were the main sources of morality, order, and freedom in commercial nations, and they therefore took commerce and industry to be forces capable of overturning what remained of feudal society.⁷ This shift from civic to economic virtue, it is worth pointing out, had also occurred in England, where the rise of political economy entailed the abandonment by economists of the Whiggish language of political virtue, replaced by an emphasis on the virtues of self-restraint, industriousness, and independence as moral forces pertaining to the economic sphere.⁸ This ideological shift explains why an increasing number of commentators became critical of public relief systems, and why, in the light of their criticisms, public policy towards the poor was rethought, and the Poor Laws reformed in 1834.⁹ However, what seems to have been a peculiarity of continental discussions of commercial societies in the early decades of the nineteenth century was the propensity of many economists and liberals to resort time and time again to the language of republicanism. If writers upheld republican values so strenuously, it was to warn about the difficulty of reconciling public life with private gain, to condemn the industrial school or English political economy as threats to the stability of society and the morality of public life, and sometimes to advocate the need to reconcile commerce, luxury, and virtue. Sismondi’s Nouveaux principes (1819) can be taken as the most prominent example of a fully theorized and influential republican political economy in the post-Napoleonic period, whose purpose was to address the threat posed to citizenship by capitalism. Yet even contemporary economists more optimistic than Sismondi about the benefits of industrial growth, for instance Say, retained a republican preoccupation with the impact of mechanization on the well-being of the industrial workers.¹⁰ In Italy Gian Domenico Romagnosi and his pupils, writing for the Lombard Annali Universali di Statistica, argued that the French industrialists’ and English economists’ obsession with productivity ⁷ R. Romani, ‘Political Economy and Other Idioms: French Views on English Development, 1815–48’, European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 9 (2002), 384–401. ⁸ R. Romani, National Character and Public Spirit in Britain and France 1750–1914 (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 118–19; S. Collini, ‘The Idea of Character: Private Habits and Public Virtues’, in idem, Public Moralists (Oxford, 1991), p. 106. ⁹ J. Innes, ‘The Distinctiveness of English Poor Laws, 1750–1850’, and J. Harris, ‘From Poor Law to Welfare Sate? A European Perspective’, both in D. Winch and P. O’Brien (eds), The Political Economy of British Historical Experience, 1688–1914 (Oxford, 2002), pp. 381–407, and pp. 409–38. ¹⁰ Romani, ‘The Republican Foundations of Sismondi’s Nouveaux principes d’économie politique’, History of European Ideas, 31 (2005), 17–33. J. B. Say, Traité d’économie politique, 2 vols (Paris, 1803), i, p. 79. On Say see R. Whatmore, Republicanism and the French Revolution: An Intellectual History of Jean-Baptiste Say’s Political Economy (Oxford, 2000), pp. 156–68.

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and economic efficiency threatened civic virtues and the very foundations of society.¹¹ The Europe-wide dispute over the advantages of English commercial society was closely linked to another important theoretical discussion, regarding the definition and scope of economics as a science. Although until the beginning of the nineteenth century in England and Scotland political economy was still widely considered a science of government and society, which mixed moral considerations with more technical issues, James Mill and McCulloch persevered with the reinterpretation of Smith’s works begun by Dugald Stewart and described political economy as a science with its own scientific status, independent of constitutional thought.¹² Some contemporary economists like Sismondi and Malthus accused Mill, Say, and Ricardo of having dramatically changed the style of economic reasoning, so as to turn economics into a highly specialized, technical and therefore narrower discipline.¹³ On the continent, many economists likewise warned against the increasing specialization and independence of political economy, and judged it to be one of the main causes of the increasing immoral and inhumane obsession with the productivity of contemporary societies. In Italy, the majority of intellectuals remained sceptical about the separation of economics from politics and from the other social and moral sciences.¹⁴ Most Italian economists retained the eighteenthcentury definition of ‘public economy’. While acknowledging the existence of some universally applicable theoretical tools, ‘public economy’ blurred the distinction between political economy, economic policies, and statistics, as it relied heavily on statistical observations regarding the geographical characteristics, social conditions, and customs of a country to determine how the government should intervene in the economy.¹⁵ This discipline was by tradition closely linked to the idea of ‘public happiness’ (felicità pubblica), since the application of the principles of public economy implied that it was the government’s task to guarantee the greatest happiness possible shared by the greatest number possible, as most eighteenth-century economists from the Italian peninsula believed. This principle implied that in a contented society glaring ¹¹ G. D. Romagnosi, ‘Abbozzo storico delle dottrine alle quali fu dato il nome di industrialismo . . .’, Annali Universali di Statistica, 13 (1827), 23. ¹² D. Winch, ‘The System of the North: Dugald Stewart and his Pupils’, in S. Collini, D. Winch, J. Burrow (eds), That Noble Science of Politics: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Intellectual History (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 25–61; B. M. Fontana, Rethinking the Politics of Commercial Society: The Edinburgh Review 1802–1832 (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 79–80. ¹³ Sismondi, Nouveaux principes d’économie politique, i, pp. 58–9. T. R. Malthus, Definitions in Political Economy (London, 1827), p. 2. ¹⁴ G. D. Romagnosi, ‘Ordinamento della economica dottrina’, in idem, Collezione degli articoli di economia politica e statistica civile, in Opere, 15 vols (Florence, 1832–9), x, p. 28. ¹⁵ A. Macchioro, ‘L’economia politica di Melchiorre Gioja’, in idem, Studi di storia del pensiero economico e altri saggi (Milan, 1970), pp. 244–75; S. Patriarca, Numbers and Nationhood: Writing Statistics in Nineteenth-Century Italy (Cambridge, 1996), p. 54.


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inequalities were unacceptable and that a more even distribution of land was desirable.¹⁶ The nature and achievements of political economy during the Risorgimento have been the object of much controversy. Historiography for long dismissed Risorgimento economics as backward, anti-industrial, hostile to English political economy, and as further proof of the backwardness of Italian liberalism. In particular, the Romantics’ determination to preserve a leading role for the aristocracy in the processes of economic transformation, and their wish to defend their status as landowners, has been considered evidence of their hesitant endorsement of ‘modernity’.¹⁷ More recently, however, scholars have done much to revise these interpretations, recognizing the impact that Smithian economics, often relayed by French writers, had on Italian economics, and the openness of the Italian press to the European debates on the nature of commercial society.¹⁸ Admittedly, Romagnosi and his pupils, while welcoming the technical inventions introduced in their own time, were scathing in their judgement of the English model of development. The commercial and industrial wealth of England was, they argued, the consequence of artificially determined and government-led processes (the negation of natural and spontaneous progress) which harmed the very fabric of society, resulted in extreme and widespread poverty, and safeguarded the interests of a small aristocratic class. The Tuscan liberals, for their part, were interested in agrarian reform, but were not in favour of industrial development. However, until 1827 the Annali had published positive accounts of English economics. Another very influential contemporary Italian writer, Melchiorre Gioja, favoured industrial development and an intensiveentrepreneurial exploitation of agriculture, in which greater development and maximum profit would be attained at the expense of land redistribution. Although Gioja referred to England not as a model of society based on free trade and laissez-faire, but rather as a nation whose mercantilistic and protectionist policies had ensured a high degree of development, he hugely admired it for its commercial wealth.¹⁹ While the Conciliatore had no settled and consistant image of English economy, presenting the arguments both of Sismondi and Gioja, the ¹⁶ P. Verri, ‘Discorso sulla felicità’, in Scritti Vari ordinati da Giulio Carcano, 2 vols (Florence, 1854), i, p. 43. See also M. Isabella, ‘Riformismo settecentesco e risorgimento: l’opera di Pietro Verri e il pensiero italiano della prima metà dell’ottocento’, Il pensiero economico italiano, 13 (2005), 31–50. ¹⁷ M. Guglielminetti, ‘ ‘‘Decadenza’’ e ‘‘progresso’’ dell’Italia nel dibattito fra classicisti e romantici’, in La Restaurazione in Italia: strutture e ideologie. Atti del XLVII congresso di Storia del Risorgimento italiano (Rome, 1976), pp. 251–96; L. Villari, Industria e Romanticismo. Letteratura, libertà e macchine nell’Italia dell’ottocento (Bari, 1999). ¹⁸ R. Romani; ‘La Storiografia sul Pensiero Economico del Risorgimento: gli autori e l’Italia settentrionale’, Il Pensiero Economico Italiano, 1 (1993), 99–124; M. Guidi, T. Maccabelli, and ´ E. Morato, ‘Neo-Smithian Political Economy in Italy (1777–1848)’, Economies et sociétés, Série Oeconomia, ‘Histoire de la pensée ećonomique’, 2 (2004), 217–65. ¹⁹ Guidi, Maccabelli, and Morato, ‘Neo-Smithian Political Economy’, 237–47; R. Romani, ‘Gli economisti risorgimentali di fronte allo sviluppo inglese, 1815–1848’, Il Pensiero Economico

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majority of its economic articles, written primarily by Pecchio, seemed to favour the ideas of the latter and support the gradual introduction of a manufacturing sector in Lombardy.²⁰ If there was any peculiarity at all about Italian economics in the first decades of the nineteenth century, it lay first and foremost in its close association with the Risorgimento as a political and intellectual enterprise. The material conditions for the creation of a national market might not exist, but Italian liberals viewed in the destruction of the feudal mode of production and the application of the laws of economics a crucial element in the rebirth of Italy and in its association with contemporary European progress.²¹ Another, equally important oddity of Italian economic thought was its emphasis on the primacy of its own theoretical tradition. In his extensive collection, anthologizing the writings of the Italian economists from the early seventeenth century onwards, Pietro Custodi was the first to highlight the special importance of Italy’s intellectual achievements in the field of economics. In similar vein, contemporaries such as Salfi, Gioja, and Romagnosi also advanced the claim that Italy held a historical primacy in the establishment of political economy as a scientific discipline and defended the Italian tradition from the attacks of the foreign economists.²² The idea of an Italian primacy in economics was advanced either to defend Italy’s contribution to what was increasingly seen as a ‘science of progress’, without however dismissing the achievements of contemporary French and English economics (as in the case of Gioja), or to attack such achievements as the theoretical justification of a deeply unfair model of commercial society (as in the case of Romagnosi).²³ When contributing to these debates, the exiles’ advantage lay in their firsthand knowledge of English and French social and economic conditions. It was precisely this lack of direct experience that often made contemporary Italian accounts of northern societies somewhat sketchy and simplistic. Through the exiles, however, the views propagated by Sismondi and Romagnosi could at last be tested. For instance, during their stay in England, Giovanni Arrivabene Italiano, 10 (2002), 43–71, and esp. 49–54. See M. Gioja, Nuovo prospetto delle scienze economiche, 6 vols (Milan, 1815–17). ²⁰ M. Isabella, ‘Il ‘‘Conciliatore’’ e l’Inghilterra’, in G. Barbarisi and A. Cadioli (eds), Idee e Figure del ‘Conciliatore’ (Milan, 2004), pp. 477–507; G. Pecchio, ‘Nouveaux principes d’économie politique’, Il Conciliatore, ii, pp. 727–31.; iii, pp. 34–41; iii, pp. 50–60; idem, ‘Sulle Manifatture nazionali e tariffe daziarie. Discorso popolare di Melchiorre Gioja’, Il Conciliatore, iii, pp. 247–59. S. Pellico, ‘An Enquiry into the Origin, etc. Ricerca sovra la natura e l’origine della pubblica ricchezza, e sovra i mezzi e le cause del suo accrescimento. Art.II’, Il Conciliatore, ii, pp. 530–6. ²¹ R. Romani, L’economia politica del Risorgimento ( Turin, 1994). ²² P. Custodi, (ed.), Scrittori classici italiani di economia politica, 50 vols (Milan, 1803–16), i, p. vi. ²³ M. Gioja, ‘Nuovo Prospetto delle Scienze economiche, ossia Somma totale delle idee teoriche e pratiche in ogni ramo d’amministrazione privata e pubblica . . .’, Biblioteca Italiana, 7 (1817), 190–213, and esp. 191. G. D. Romagnosi, ‘Disputa: Se consti che le dottrine economiche sorte fuor d’Italia siano state tratte dagli Italiani’, Annali Universali di Statistica,16 (1828), 192–5.


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and Giuseppe Pecchio travelled far and wide; at New Lanark they admired Robert Owen’s project, and were favourably impressed by the living conditions of the workers and the quality of the infant schools.²⁴ In addition, exile put Italian patriots in direct contact with the intellectual community of French and British economists. Say was among Salfi’s closest friends in Paris. The Parisbased GianBattista Marochetti was for his part deeply influenced by the views of French republicans on the benefits of contemporary commercial societies. Both Pecchio and Arrivabene met in London with the members of the political Economy Club, McCulloch, Thomas Tooke, James Mill and Thomas Spring Rice among them, to exchange views on theoretical questions and matters of economic policy, at a time when the Smithian legacy, along with the theories of Malthus, was under debate.²⁵ In his capacity as a leading member of the Royal Commission set up in 1832 to reform the Poor Laws, Nassau Senior directly involved Arrivabene in the enquiry into the continental systems for managing poverty and in the conditions of the poor outside Britain that was commissioned as an integral part of the report, and then in the drafting of the Act of Parliament itself. Arrivabene conducted an investigation into the conditions of the working classes in Belgium, entitled A Letter on the Management of the Poor in Belgium, which was, Nassau Senior claimed, ‘the most important and curious of our communications’.²⁶ Finally, the exiles were best placed to act as mediators and as intellectual bridges between Italian and foreign economists advancing rival definitions of political economy or debating the historical merits of the Italian economic school. For instance, Salfi directly intervened in a dispute between his friend Say and Say’s Italian critics, who either accused the French thinker of having underestimated the role of Italian economists in fostering economic science (as Nicola Porcinari had claimed in 1824), or disagreed as to the definition and scope of statistics as a science. More particularly, whereas Gioja was convinced that statistics could uncover general facts and laws serving to shape policies, Say believed that this role could be fulfilled only by economics, since statistics dealt merely with particular facts. Salfi, for his part, defended Say in the Revue encyclopédique against criticism levelled by Porcinari, yet at the same time published a laudatory review of Gioja’s Filosofia della Statistica and endorsed the notion of the Italian economic school’s ²⁴ G. Arrivabene, Memorie della mia vita 1795–1859 (Florence, 1879), pp. 113–58. ²⁵ C. MacFarlane, Reminiscences of a Literary Life (London, 1917), p. 196. Pecchio visited Malthus in November 1825 (Pecchio to Panizzi, 18 February 1826, in BM, Add. Mss., Panizzi’s Correspondence, 36714). ²⁶ A Letter from Count Arrivabene on the Management of the Poor in Belgium, in C. Cameron, J. Wrottesley, and J. W.Cowell, Two Reports addressed to His Majesty’s Commissioners appointed to inquire into the administration and operation of the Poor Laws (London, 1834), pp. 197–224. Nassau Senior’s comment is in his letter to Arrivabene, Jan. 1834, Nassau Senior Papers, C015, NLW. Arrivabene’s enquiry targeted the poor of Gaasbeek, a village outside Brussels on the margins of the estate of another Italian exile and friend of Nassau Senior, Marchioness Costanza Visconti Arconati.

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historical primacy previously dismissed by Say.²⁷ As I explain below, Pecchio’s Storia dell’economia pubblica in Italia (1829) was a continuation abroad of the campaign conducted in the Italian press in defence of the Italian economic tradition. Translated into French and German, and used by contemporary and later writers when discussing Italian economists, the Storia represented the most influential and popular interpretation of Italian economic thought available in Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century.²⁸ As a result of their observations, both Pecchio and Arrivabene came to admire English commercial society perhaps more than many contemporary Italian economists, without however disregarding the negative impact factory conditions might have on the labouring classes, and were fulsome in their praise of its achievements. Through their published writings, they commended English commercial society to continental audiences. Pecchio’s L’anno 1826 dell’Inghilterra (1827), hailed by the Tuscan Antologia as a ‘European book for its subject as well as for the eminently philosophical point of view it presents’, celebrated the virtues of political freedom as a precondition for economic growth.²⁹ Arrivabene’s equally fervent enthusiasm for England stemmed from his analysis of the problem of poverty and its management. His Di varie società e instituzioni di beneficenza in Londra (1828–32) and his Considérations sur les principaux moyens d’améliorer le sort des classes ouvrières (1832), reflecting the debates surrounding the reform of the Poor Laws, portrayed a country in which, thanks to political freedom and the correct economic policies, poverty might come to be dramatically reduced, if not totally eradicated.³⁰ As with their analysis of the English constitutional model, the exiles’ economic discussions helped them imagine Italy as a single economic and political community, and to debate whether a French or an English model of development should be preferred. While Pecchio, keen as he was on the idea of Italy’s future prospects as an industrial ²⁷ On these disputes see M. Guidi and J.-P. Potier, ‘Fantasia italiana: La ricezione del pensiero economico di Jean-Baptiste Say nell’età del Risorgimento’, in P. Barucci (ed.), Le frontiere dell’economia politica (Florence, 2003) pp. 179–81; see F. Salfi, ‘Riflessioni sul Trattato di Economia politica del Sig. Say, Napoli, 1824’, Revue encyclopédique, 28 (1825), 830–1; idem, ‘Filosofia della statistica’, Revue encyclopédique, 37 (1828), 470–3. ²⁸ Here I will quote the 1992 edition by G. M. Gaspari. The Storia dell’economia pubblica was reprinted by Ruggia, Lugano, in 1832 and 1849. The French title was Histoire de l’économie politique en Italie, ou abrégé critique des Economistes Italiens, précédée d’une introduction par le Comte J. Pecchio (Paris, 1830). In Germany it was abridged by J. J. Buss at Karlsruhe, 1841, with Blanqui’s Histoire de l’économie politique en Europe. Evidence of the influence of Pecchio’s History can be found in the entry ‘Political Economy’, Penny Cyclopedia (London, 1840), viii, pp. 339–42; A. Blanqui, History of Political Economy in Europe [1837] (London, 1880), pp. 207, 522–25; J. P. Alban de Villeneuve-Bargement, Histoire de l’économie politique [1839] (Paris, 1841), pp. 408–16. F. List’s The National System of Political Economy [1841] (London, 1909), pp. 4, 263, followed Pecchio’s description of the economic conditions on the peninsula in the Middle Ages and drew on his analysis of the economic ideas of Italian economists. ²⁹ ‘L’anno 1826 dell’Inghilterra’, Antologia, 27 (1827), 19–36; 28 (1827), 28–49. ³⁰ Published in Lugano by Ruggia in 1832 as Dei mezzi più propri a migliorare la sorte degli Operai.


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nation, did not believe that the English model could be transferred wholesale to Italy, Arrivabene thought that a similar pattern of development could be imposed on the continent without much modification. As this chapter will demonstrate, not only might different attitudes towards economic development be developed in exile, but a variety of intellectual tools could be likewise employed to evaluate them. Where Pecchio combined Italian and foreign intellectual traditions in his analysis of England, Arrivabene unreservedly adopted the new tools of British economics and contributed to their dissemination on the continent. Marochetti’s preoccupations with the excessive commercialization of French society led to his proposing a model of commercial society for a future independent Italy based on French republican values. Finally, analysis of the exiles’ economic thought can help us better understand the nature of exile liberalism and its relationship with contemporary European currents.

G I U S E P PE PE C C H I O ’ S ‘ S C I E N Z A D E L L’ A M O R PAT R I O ’

Contemporary England as a New Medieval Florence: Political Freedom and Economic Prosperity Pecchio wrote his L’anno mille ottocento ventisei dell’Inghilterra when the world’s leading commercial power was in the grip of a major economic crisis. The crisis revived in the European press the debate over the nature of commercial crises and the possibility of a general glut, in the course of which Say and his supporters took issue with Sismondi. Pecchio unequivocally sided with those who believed that the crises were only temporary in nature. In spite of the temporarily disastrous conditions of the economy, the mounting unemployment and declining industrial production, Pecchio argued that the drawbacks of English commercial life (un’esistenza commerciale) were outweighed by the advantages deriving from the immense potential of international trade and industrial production, advantages that would ultimately be shared by all social ranks.³¹ Adopting as his own the argument put forward in an article McCulloch had published in the Edinburgh Review, he blamed the crisis principally on the speculators and the unscrupulous businessmen on the one hand, and the commercial restrictions imposed by the government on the other. He denied that in a commercial society gluts were bound to recur from time to time for structural reasons.³² Only among the secondary causes of the crisis did Pecchio list industrial overproduction stemming from the introduction of machinery, but ³¹ Pecchio, L’anno mille ottocento ventisei, in SP, p. 317. ³² Ibid., p. 314; idem, ‘The Late Crisis in the Money Market Impartially Considered’, Edinburgh Review, 44 (1826), 70–93. On McCulloch see Fontana, Rethinking the Politics of Commercial Society, pp. 141–3.

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concluded that the temporary setbacks were the price that had to be paid for the rapid growth caused by the introduction of mechanization.³³ He also accepted that the problem of poverty in England was mainly due to the persistence of the Poor Laws. He saw poverty as being in part a problem that a growing economy could resolve and in part an inescapable phenomenon governed by natural laws; machinery could therefore not be blamed as the root cause of distress.³⁴ Although, in the wake of Smith and Say, Pecchio could not help observing that by enhancing the division of labour, machinery had a negative effect on the well-being of labourers, he was also led to believe that England had successfully managed to tackle the problems arising from the division of labour.³⁵ After all, he wrote, whereas in France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal the poor were ‘liars, beggars, wastrels, tramps’, in England they were ‘well dressed, well fed, always behind the plough’.³⁶ The arguments put forward in L’anno mille ottocento ventisei and Pecchio’s description of the English model were in sharp contrast to those offered by Romagnosi and his school and by the Tuscan liberals, and were instead closer to Gioja’s intellectual legacy. Besides defending England’s society and economy from her continental detractors, Pecchio devoted most of his efforts to showing that freedom was the principal cause of English economic success. Pecchio’s central theme in both L’anno mille ottocento ventisei and the Storia dell’economia pubblica was the mutual interdependence between commerce and political freedom, a common and yet much disputed theme in eighteenthcentury economic and political writings. The civilizing effect of trade and the contribution of commerce to the improvement of the political order represented the main tenets of this commercial ideology.³⁷ Among the many thinkers who had developed this argument, Pecchio was acquainted in particular with Italian economists like Antonio Genovesi and the Lombard reformers of Il Caffè. These writers had looked to reconcile the legacy of civic humanism with the needs and the characteristics of modern societies. In the wake of Hume and Montesquieu, the Italian economists had developed the belief that republican virtues and commerce were not only compatible, but that commerce actually contributed to the citizens’ sense of attachment to their country.³⁸ ³³ Pecchio, L’anno mille ottocento ventisei. ³⁴ Ibid., p. 293. ³⁵ Ibid., p. 347. See also G. Pecchio, Semi-Serious Observation of an Italian Exile during his Residence in England (London and Philadelphia, 1833), p. 62, where he quoted Say, Traité, i, p. 79. A. Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 2 vols, ed. R. H Campbell, A. S. Skinner and W. B. Todd (Oxford, 1976), ii, pp. 781–6. See D. Winch’s observations in Adam Smith’s Politics (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 113–20. ³⁶ Pecchio, L’anno mille ottocento ventisei, pp. 292–3. ³⁷ A. O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests (Princeton, 1977). ³⁸ P. Verri, ‘Considerazioni sul Lusso’, Francioni and Romagnoli (eds), Il Caffè, pp. 155–62; S. Franci, ‘Osservazioni sulla questione se il commercio corrompa i costumi e la morale’, ibid., pp. 655–61; A. Verri, ‘Alcune Riflessioni sulla opinione che il commercio deroghi alla nobiltà’, ibid., pp. 256–74. A. Genovesi, Lezioni di Economia Civile [1765], in Opere Scelte, 2 vols


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On the title page of his L’anno mille ottocento ventisei Pecchio quoted verbatim Genovesi’s statement that ‘Commerce destroys tyranny because it introduces the spirit of humanity and of patriotism.’³⁹ He followed in Genovesi’s footsteps when he declared that only modern commercial societies had managed to reconcile valour, a typical republican virtue, with luxury. Finally, he concluded that commerce was always republican, or at least constitutional, requiring as it did ‘continuity of laws’ (impossible in absolute monarchies), educated people, the protection of property and personal rights, a reliable judicial system, and freedom of speech and association.⁴⁰ While these ideas were widely agreed on among economists and political thinkers in the early nineteenth century, the most original aspect of Pecchio’s treatment was his acknowledgement that England’s economic success depended not only on the protection of civil rights and the right of property, but also on the active participation of the general population in the political process.⁴¹ In his L’anno mille ottocento ventisei, Pecchio concluded his reflections on the relationship between politics and economics with a historical comparison between the medieval republic of Florence and contemporary England, which was probably inspired by Sismondi’s Histoire des républiques italiennes. In Chapter 126 of his Histoire Sismondi had drawn a comparison between the liberty enjoyed in medieval republics and that found in contemporary societies, and although he admitted that life was not safe in Italy in the Middle Ages because of the lack of protection of civil rights and the absence of a division of powers, he declared his admiration for the medieval republics, in which political freedom in the form of active citizenship, accompanied by virtue, was shared by all the citizens. The civil liberties protected in contemporary states made citizens perhaps happier, concluded Sismondi, but less virtuous.⁴² In addition, in the Histoire Sismondi had himself drawn a parallel between contemporary England and the medieval republics, as in both cases freedom had ensured economic prosperity and literary glory.⁴³ However, in his Nouveaux principes (1819) Sismondi had stressed that in contemporary England mechanization and the excessive division of labour had destroyed the workers’ ability to enjoy active citizenship, and thus the processes of mechanization taking place in England and high farming became in Sismondi’s eyes a grave (Milan, 1824), i, p. 157. On the idea of patriotism among the Lombard reformers of Il Caffé see N. Jonard, ‘Cosmopolitismo e patriotismo nel ‘‘Caffé’’ ’, in A. de Maddalena, E. Rotelli, and G. Barbarisi (eds), Economia, istituzioni, cultura in Lombardia nell’età di Maria Teresa, 3 vols (Bologna, 1982), ii, pp. 65–95. ³⁹ Pecchio, L’anno mille ottocento, pp. 277, 323. The quotation is from A. Genovesi, Lezioni di economia civile, in Opere Scelte, i, p. 299. ⁴⁰ Ibid. ⁴¹ J. B. Say, Cours complet d’économie politique pratique, 6 vols (Paris, 1828–9), i, p. 62–3. Mme de Staël, Considérations sur la Révolution Française, ed. J. Godechot, pp. 525–6. ⁴² Sismondi, Histoire des républiques italiennes, 16 vols (Paris, 1809–19), xvi, pp. 357–58. ⁴³ Sismondi, Histoire, xii, pp. 6–7.

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threat to the civic virtues of modern societies.⁴⁴ Pecchio stuck to Sismondi’s original view and developed it in a way that, by 1826, Sismondi himself would not have approved of. Indeed, he noted several similarities between Sismondi’s medieval republics and contemporary England, societies in which commerce and political virtue thrived together, and concluded that England was, politically speaking, a new Florence. Pecchio compared the social tensions between labourers and the manufacturers in England to those existing between the populace and the magistrates of the guilds in Machiavelli’s Florence, in particular contrasting the populace which represented the democratic element of English society and the mob led by Michele di Lando during the famous ‘Revolt of the Ciompi’.⁴⁵ While in L’anno mille ottocento ventisei the Italian economists of the Enlightenment and Sismondi enabled Pecchio to stress the importance of civic virtues in commercial societies, in the Introduction to his Storia dell’economia pubblica in Italia he focused his attention on the need to guarantee civil rights and the protection of property. He claimed that Smith was the greatest advocate of freedom, and the economist who had best explained the relationship between commerce and freedom. Historians, who have normally considered Pecchio as an ‘enemy’ of Smith, have overlooked this aspect of his discussion. For Pecchio, Smith’s political economy was above all a doctrine of freedom from any external constraints impeding the free movement of goods or of property (guilds, protectionism, privileges, domestic duties, etc.), a vital precondition to commercial success. In Pecchio’s opinion this freedom would be impossible under a despotic regime, where absolute rulers could easily infringe the civil rights of citizens.⁴⁶ Somewhat distorting the views of the great economists, Pecchio went so far as to claim that ‘political institutions’ were the basis for the prosperity of the nations, and that Smith himself had explained how economic development depended on these ‘liberal institutions’.⁴⁷ In fact, Smith’s preference for free government did not prevent him from acknowledging that prosperity could also be achieved in absolute monarchies, provided that their government was not arbitrary and that property was protected.⁴⁸ However, Pecchio’s interpretation was well suited to his ideological aims. Pecchio maintained that the introduction of a constitution in Italy and its independence were the necessary prerequisites for economic development and civil progress. Since the Austrian ⁴⁴ Sismondi, Nouveaux principes i, p. 366. On the republican elements of Sismondi’s work see now Romani, ‘The Republican Foundations of Sismondi’s Nouveaux principes’. ⁴⁵ See Pecchio, L’anno mille ottocento, p. 319, where he compares Orator Hunt to Michele di Lando, and pp. 319–20, where he quotes Machiavelli’s Istorie Fiorentine (Florence, 1990), p. 145. ⁴⁶ G. Pecchio, Storia dell’economia pubblica in Italia [1829], ed. G. M. Gaspari (Varese, 1992), p. 18. ⁴⁷ Ibid, p. 50. ⁴⁸ Smith, The Wealth of Nations, ii, p. 540; ii, pp. 722–3. Winch, Adam Smith’s Politics, p. 86.


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government in Lombardy ‘proscribes every liberal institution’, in the empire there was ‘no civilization—no internal commerce—no flourishing manufactures—no national wealth’.⁴⁹ For Pecchio, therefore, Smith’s Wealth of Nations was primarily a tract against despotism. When dealing with the relationship between politics and economics Pecchio placed the former before the latter, advancing a powerful justification for political initiatives and revolutions, and for the Risorgimento. It was on the assumption that national independence and free political institutions were needed that Pecchio updated the debate on the relationship between political liberty and economic growth. By liberty Pecchio meant both active, participatory citizenship and negative freedom, since they were, he judged, two aspects of the same concept, and each in need of protection.

Italy and the English Model of Development Accepting the superiority of the English economic model and recognizing the destitute conditions of contemporary Italy, Pecchio turned to the economic strategies that were needed in order to transform the Italian economy. His definition of economic doctrine as economia pubblica (which, as I noted earlier, was a definition widely accepted among economists in early nineteenth-century Italy), meant that economics was a branch of a broader science of administration embracing all the possible economic policies a government could adopt in order to ensure the country’s prosperity. Public economy favoured ad hoc measures reflecting the peculiarities of a given country, rather than the universal rules of economics. Italy and the other continental countries therefore had economic and social problems different from those affecting England because they had particular climates, traditions, polities, and geographical conditions, and because they were, in Pecchio’s language, less civilized than England. Hence Pecchio’s claim that ‘public economy cannot be a cosmopolitan science, but something like that of medicine, in which the aphorisms that will apply to all cases are but few’.⁵⁰ Economic policies which could be easily applied to England were simply not applicable in Italy. In his L’anno mille ottocento ventisei Pecchio observed that economists like Mill, Malthus, Ricardo, and McCulloch favoured high wages as a means of increasing consumption and in order to be able to reduce wages during periods of hardship, when the labourers would nonetheless still have enough to live on. But Pecchio pointed out that in the rest of Europe ⁴⁹ Pecchio, Qu’est que c’est l’Austrie?, in SP, pp. 543, 535. ⁵⁰ Pecchio, Semi-Serious Observations, p. 222. Similar idea in C. Beccaria, Prolusione del 1766, in idem, Opere Complete, ed. S. Romagnoli, 2 vols (Florence 1971), i, p. 367; G. R. Carli, Meditazioni sulla economia politica di Pietro Verri Milanese con annotazioni di Gian Rinaldo Carli, in Custodi (ed.), Scrittori classici, xxii, p. 278.

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low wages represented a clear advantage.⁵¹ Likewise, McCulloch’s and Malthus’s defence of the law of primogeniture, on the grounds that it stimulated testators to find alternative sources of income for their children, thus favouring investments in commerce and industry, was unacceptable for Italy.⁵² Italian primogeniture had been attacked by economists like Antonio Genovesi, Pietro Verri, Alfonso Longo, and Cesare Beccaria on the grounds that it served to perpetuate the power of a parasitic aristocracy, constituted a symbol of privilege and a major obstacle to a more entrepreneurial exploitation of the land, and hence was a hindrance to the development of commerce, agriculture, and population growth.⁵³ Pecchio argued that the English defence of primogeniture could not be applied to the rest of Europe, ‘where there is no manufacture or commerce, great properties cannot help but divide a nation between a wealthy and overbearing minority, and a multitude of poor, degraded and brutalized mercenaries’.⁵⁴ In Italy Napoleonic land reform had matched the needs of Italian society and agriculture. Even in discussing the development of a national network of roads, Pecchio advocated the need for different strategies. Smith had proposed the introduction of tolls for the maintenance of roads, so that the consumers would pay directly for that service.⁵⁵ But, following Pietro Verri, Pecchio stated that in a country of ‘little activity, little commerce’ tolls would only hinder the expansion of trade and commercial activity, because they made the various parts of a country more isolated.⁵⁶ Pecchio thus concluded that the economic policies advocated by the English economists were inapplicable outside England because of the backwardness of the other European nations (in a broad cultural, economic, social, and political sense). This backwardness called for alternative strategies for coping with English and continental competition and only once they had achieved a level of wealth that put them on a par with England, could the continental countries adapt themselves to the English system and to the principles advocated by its economists. This he believed to be the virtue of the Italian intellectual tradition and it was to the Italian economists and their contribution to economics that Pecchio devoted his most famous work, the Storia dell’economia pubblica in Italia. ⁵¹ L’anno mille ottocento, p. 292–3. On the desirability of high wages see M. Berg, The Machinery Question and the Making of Political Economy (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 81–4; Smith, The Wealth of Nations, i, pp. 99. ⁵² McCulloch, ‘Disposal of Property by Will-Entails-French Law of Succession’, Edinburgh Review, 40, (1824), 350–375. Similar argument is to be found in Malthus, Principles of Political Economy [1820], ed. J. M. Pullen, 2 vols (Cambridge, 1989), i, pp. 437, 507. ⁵³ C. Beccaria, Elementi di Economia Pubblica, in idem, Opere, i, p. 444; P. Verri, ‘Considerazioni sul lusso’, Il Caffè, pp. 159–60; A. Longo, ‘Osservazioni su i fidecommessi’, Il Caffè, pp. 120–32; A. Genovesi, Opuscoli di Economia politica, in Custodi (ed.), Scrittori classici, xvi, p. 262. ⁵⁴ Pecchio, Storia dell’economia pubblica, p. 133–4. ⁵⁵ Smith, The wealth of nations, ii, pp. 724–5. ⁵⁶ P. Verri, Meditazioni sull’economia politica, in Custodi (ed.), Scrittori classici, xxii, pp. 261–2. Pecchio, Semi-Serious Observations, pp. 189–90.


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Comparing Italian and English Economic Thought With his Storia dell’economia pubblica in Italia Pecchio set out to provide an abridged version of Custodi’s extensive collection of the Scrittori classici italiani di economia politica. Pecchio’s Storia made an important contribution to the diffusion of the idea of the Italian primacy in economic doctrine, and fuelled the debate between Italian and foreign economists about its historical validity. In England, McCulloch had dismissed Italy’s claim to historical primacy in an article on political economy published in 1824. Pecchio challenged McCulloch’s denial that Antonio Serra’s Trattato of 1613 had laid the foundations of a new science, claiming that the Scottish economist was depriving Italy of ‘its only outstanding comfort, the glory of her great men [. . .] a[n] usurpation similar to theft’.⁵⁷ Yet Pecchio’s defence of this historical primacy was more than a sterile and conservative glorification of the past. Patriotic pride was accompanied by gloomy considerations about the contemporary political and economic state of the Italian peninsula. Pecchio believed that the Italians could not simply continue to gaze back at their past with complacency, but had to use the awareness of their glorious tradition as a positive stimulus to press ahead, in accordance with the English example. Pecchio’s patriotism could not conceal the fact that many of the ideas of the Italian economists were not only obsolete and offered little practical advice, but were even wrong. In this respect the comparison between Custodi’s and Pecchio’s attitudes towards GianMaria Ortes is instructive. In his Errori popolari intorno all’economia nazionale (1774) Ortes had claimed that economic progress was not possible. For him, national production was inevitably determined by and in direct proportion to the size of each country, its population, and its resources. The overall production of each country was always limited by consumption so that the temporary improvement of one province could only mean that another area of the country was getting poorer. The main consequence of this interpretation of economics was that poverty and unemployment went hand in hand with the existence of employment and wealthy people.⁵⁸ Baron Custodi had praised Ortes for his originality, which he regarded as an expression of Italian genius, but in Pecchio’s opinion Ortes’s Italianità was no longer a sufficient reason for praising his eccentricity, since his theories contradicted all the beliefs Pecchio had expressed in his writings.⁵⁹ Although he praised Ortes’s theory of population for its similarity to that of Malthus ⁵⁷ R. McCulloch, ‘Political Economy’, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Edinburgh, 1824), vi, 216–278, p. 229. Pecchio, Storia dell’economia pubblica, p. 48. ⁵⁸ Pecchio, Storia dell’economia pubblica, pp. 139–49. P. Del Negro, ‘L’Economia Nazionale di Giammaria Ortes’, in G. L. Fontana and A. Lazzarini (eds), Veneto e Lombardia tra rivoluzione giacobina ed età napoleonica. Economia, territorio, istituzioni (Milan, Rome, and Bari, 1992), pp. 492–503. ⁵⁹ Custodi (ed.), Scrittori classici, xxviii, pp. xxviii-xxix, xl.

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and concluded that his doctrine could to some extent be considered an original exposition of the principle of free trade, Pecchio considered Ortes’s dismissal of the idea of progress absurd.⁶⁰ In other cases, Pecchio insisted that the Italian economists had been the forerunners of later theoretical discoveries. Pietro Verri, within the limits imposed by the economic development of his age and the absence of thriving industry, ‘expresses the same principles so lucidly developed in the works of Smith and Say’, while Ortes advocated free trade as Smith was later to do.⁶¹ In comparing the Italians to European economists, Pecchio therefore tried to show how their theoretical efforts were consistent with those of ‘liberal’ writers such as Smith or Say. By showing how their ideas were compatible with those of European liberal writers, he was also trying to put their ideas on the stage of contemporary political and economic theory. In the chapter of his Storia dell’economia pubblica devoted to Italian economic science after 1796, Pecchio described Gioja’s Prospetto delle scienze economiche as the ‘great estuary of the science [of public economy]’, and portrayed him as a fervent Anglophile who had ‘imported English economic ideas into Italy’ and admired English economic praxis.⁶² Pecchio’s admiration for the Italian economists was based on their ability to exert a positive intellectual influence on their own governments. Verri and Beccaria in Lombardy, Genovesi and Filangieri in Naples, and Neri in Tuscany, he argued, all managed to influence political decisions. Economic science had practical effects because it did not simply eradicate mistaken beliefs and superstitions, but also made the introduction of economic and legal reforms possible.⁶³ This led him to conclude that the study and application of public economy had been far more useful in despotic and poor countries than in free countries, where liberty naturally acted as a stimulus to growth, because public economy became a ‘substitute’ for freedom, ‘the greatest legislator of the people’. Hence Pecchio’s famous definition of political economy as ‘a science of patriotism’ (scienza dell’amor patrio), which meant that he saw political economy as providing the intellectual tools needed for reforms and as an expression of the desire to improve conditions in one’s own country.⁶⁴ Pecchio’s Storia was therefore intended to make Italians aware of the backwardness of their fatherland by pointing out to them their past intellectual glories and practical achievements. Yet his defence of the Italian primacy did not prevent him, as it had in the case of Romagnosi, from acknowledging the theoretical achievements of the English school. In the most famous chapter of the Storia, the ‘Confronto tra gli scrittori Italiani e gli scrittori Inglesi’, Pecchio presented a summary of the differences between the two countries and the economic schools. However, it is also the most ⁶⁰ Pecchio, Storia dell’economia pubblica, pp. 144–6, 148–9. ⁶¹ Ibid., pp. 120, 56. ⁶² Ibid., p. 207. ⁶³ Ibid., pp. 227–33. ⁶⁴ Ibid., p. 233.


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widely misinterpreted part of his writings. With reference to the ‘Confronto’, Barucci wrote that Pecchio was scathing about Smith and the English economic approach,⁶⁵ and Parisi Acquaviva asserted that ‘Pecchio puts Smith among the industrialists and the prophets of the theory of machinery, whose thesis he rejects.’⁶⁶ Gioli agreed that Pecchio’s critical attitude towards Smith exemplified ‘the lens through which Smith’s Wealth of Nations was read’ in Italy.⁶⁷ But rather than representing the provincial rejection of English economics, Pecchio’s ‘Confronto’ was intended first and foremost to contribute to the European debate on the definition of political economy. Pecchio contrasted English political economy, defined as ‘an isolated science’, and ‘the science of enriching the nations’, to the Italian school of public economy, whose merit lay in its search for the well-being of the ‘greatest number’ and for public happiness, a definition indebted to Verri’s idea of economics.⁶⁸ He thus praised this approach, against the tendency of the English economists to turn the industrial worker into a ‘productive machine’ condemned to ‘excessive toil’.⁶⁹ Yet it was mainly Ricardo’s contribution to the science, criticized for its obscurity, that led Pecchio to complain about the aridity of English economic discourse: indeed in his opinion Ricardo and Smith had reduced political economy to a ‘skeleton [. . .] a dry osteology’.⁷⁰ However, he admitted that the English school had managed to discover economic principles which offered a unique insight. More importantly, in spite of its shortcomings, he also confirmed the superiority of the English commercial society based on productivity, rather than on frugality and land distribution, according to the model advocated by eighteenth-century Italian economists.⁷¹ Ultimately, Pecchio dismissed the republican paradigm which grouped together martial virtues, citizenship, agriculture, and landownership, and characterized most of the eighteenth-century Italian economists’ speculations:⁷² These two different systems also have different consequences. The Italian one, which is based on moderation, tranquillity, health rather than comfort, vigour more than education, tends to immobility, or at most to a slow movement towards perfection. The ⁶⁵ P. Barucci, ‘Il pensiero economico ‘‘classico’’ nei primi decenni dell’800: un tentativo d’interpretazione d’assieme’, in Fatti e idee di storia economica nei secoli XII–XX, Studi dedicati a Franco Borlandi (Bologna, 1977), pp. 689–702. Barucci’s comment is at p. 693. ⁶⁶ D. Parisi Acquaviva, Il pensiero economico classico in Italia (1750–1860), (Milan, 1984), p. 186. ⁶⁷ G. Gioli, ‘The diffusion of the Economic Thought of Adam Smith in Italy, 1776–1876’, in M. Hiroshi and S. Chunei (eds), Adam Smith: International Perspectives (London, 1993), p. 232. ⁶⁸ Pecchio, Storia dell’economia pubblica, p. 215. ⁶⁹ Ibid., p. 216. ⁷⁰ Ibid., pp. 216–17, 222. ⁷¹ Ibid., p. 217. ⁷² On the importance of landownership in the republican tradition see J. G. A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 103–4. On the permanence of this paradigm among Neapolitan reformers, see A. M. Rao, ‘Organizzazione militare e modelli politici a Napoli fra illuminismo e rivoluzione’, in V. I. Comparato (ed.), Modelli nella storia del pensiero politico, 2 vols (Florence, 1989), ii, pp. 39–63. See also P. Verri, ‘Considerazioni sul lusso’, Il Caffè, p. 158. A. Genovesi, Lezioni di economia civile, in Opere Scelte, p. 76.

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English one is animated by a perpetual and growing movement which quickly drives society to the highest stage of civilization!⁷³

The English managed to progress so quickly, wrote Pecchio, because they knew how to stimulate needs. Using the language of Gioja and the Italian economists, he claimed that the progressive pursuit of greater personal satisfaction was not only an incentive to a sophisticated economy but also the main road towards civilization.⁷⁴ In this the English were unrivalled, and the consequences were that greater and more evenly spread wealth could be observed even among the lower classes.⁷⁵ The theoretical criticism that opened the ‘Confronto’, based on the routine assumption that the English ‘technical’ and ‘theoretical’ school was in contrast to the Italian ‘moral’ and ‘social’ school, therefore gave way to a positive conclusion about the English virtues and the advantages of Great Britain’s commitment to production. The overall message of the ‘Confronto’, confirmed also by his later writings such as the Osservazioni Semi-serie, was that while England represented the essence of modern civilization, and the epitome of progress, there were unquestionable drawbacks to its social model. Pecchio neither completely abandoned the republican language nor the intellectual legacy of Verri. Blending together both intellectual traditions represented for Pecchio the best means to reconcile progress and happiness. Yet it was no longer through utopian redistributions of land but through popular education and civic participation that human dignity and philanthropy could be reconciled with progress, and the potential threat to patriotism posed by mechanization could be kept at bay.⁷⁶ This was the overall message of Pecchio’s oeuvre. That Pecchio’s ideas were taken seriously by his contemporaries in Britain is confirmed by the reactions of British economists. Ramsay McCulloch, mentioned by Pecchio in his Storia with reference to the former’s claim that the first political economist had been English and not Italian, felt that a reply was in order.⁷⁷ When the Storia was reviewed in the Edinburgh Review, McCulloch complained to the new editor of the journal, Macvey Napier, that he would have liked to review the book himself.⁷⁸ In fact the task of replying to Pecchio’s comparative analysis of the Italian and English schools was taken up by Thomas Spring Rice and not by McCulloch.⁷⁹ Spring Rice presented the Storia dell’economia pubblica as a ‘brilliant and masterly abstract’ of Custodi’s collection, containing ‘an admirable historical ⁷³ Pecchio, Storia dell’economia pubblica, pp. 221–2. ⁷⁴ P. Barucci, Il pensiero economico di Melchiorre Gioja (Milan, 1965), pp. 92–5. C. Beccaria, Elementi di economia pubblica, in idem, Opere, i, pp. 399–400; Verri, Meditazioni, p. 10. ⁷⁵ Pecchio, Storia dell’economia pubblica, p. 221. ⁷⁶ Pecchio, Semi-Serious Observations, pp. 59–63, 69–75. ⁷⁷ Pecchio, Storia dell’economia pubblica, p. 48. ⁷⁸ See M. Napier (ed.), Selection from the Correspondence of the Late Macvey Napier, Esq. (London, 1879), p. 73. ⁷⁹ T. Spring Rice, ‘Mr. Sadler’s School—Italian Economists’, Edinburgh Review, 50 (1830), 344–63.


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sketch of the conditions of the Italian states’.⁸⁰ On the differences between the two schools Spring Rice raised some objections to Pecchio’s views. On the one hand, he was convinced that such views could be easily explained by looking at the political and historical contexts in which Italian and English economists conceived their ideas.⁸¹ While English economists might take the benefits of representative institutions and civil liberties for granted, in Italy their importance for economic progress had still to be demonstrated. He then vindicated the ‘English’ approach and the separation of political and moral concerns from the laws of political economy, on the grounds that the former were based on different principles. More importantly, however, in his essentially sympathetic article, he enrolled Pecchio among the supporters of contemporary political economy against the Tory party and landowning interests. Spring Rice in fact understood and endorsed Pecchio’s aim of demonstrating the continuity between the principles discovered by the Italian economists and those advocated by contemporary English economists and politicians.⁸² In recognizing the advocacy of his own principles within the framework of the Italian intellectual tradition, he acknowledged the common ground between his and Pecchio’s liberalism.

A D D R E S S I N G P OV E RT Y I N A C O M M E RC I A L S O C I E T Y: G I OVA N N I A R R I VA B E N E , C H A R I TA B L E I N S T I T U T I O N S , A N D T H E R E F O R M O F T H E P O O R L AW S

Relieving Poverty: Charitable Institutions and the ‘Natural Order of Things’ The revolutionary era represented a watershed in the perception of both the causes of poverty and the intellectual and political means of dealing with it. In its aftermath the Smithian legacy took on a socially conservative overtone, not least because of the influence of Christian evangelical theology. With Malthus, inequality came to be seen as the result of a set of natural causes, as part of God’s design to stimulate industriousness in human beings and to punish idleness.⁸³ For Christian economists like Thomas Chalmers, and intellectuals like the Oxford-trained Noetics, there was no contradiction between the aims of political economy and those of moral sciences, since in their view the desire for material betterment was sure to improve the morality of the people. As a result, poverty came increasingly to be associated with vice and moral degradation, while frugality, industriousness, and self-help came to be seen as the only virtues leading both to moral and material improvement. This generation of economists ⁸⁰ Ibid., p. 357. ⁸¹ Ibid., p. 361. ⁸² Ibid., pp. 356, 361. ⁸³ G. Stedman Jones, An End to Poverty? A Historical Debate (London, 2004).

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was distrustful of state intervention as a means of resolving poverty, believed that laws should be confined to deterring people from committing crime, and that the advancement of morality could only be encouraged, but not regulated, the exercise of virtue being strictly voluntary.⁸⁴ Since the late 1820s, the rising generation of economists had begun to reassess Malthus’s principles of population in order to advance a more optimistic view of the potential for unlimited economic progress, but did not abandon his emphasis on morality. Nassau Senior’s theories are a case in point. No longer convinced that population pressure was permanently threatening the availability of food and wages, Nassau Senior believed that in reality, as a result of technological development on the one hand and of the growing taste for sophisticated consumption among the working classes on the other, population growth could be permanently held in check. As well as revising Malthus’s theories, Senior objected to Ricardo’s anxiety about the possibilities of a decrease in capital accumulation due to population growth, and to his hypothesis regarding the likelihood of a stationary status.⁸⁵ What emerged from Naussau Senior’s speculations was thus a firm belief in progress, only temporarily interrupted by crises. In short, he became a classic advocate of free trade, laissez-faire, and free competition as the best means of fostering social and economic improvement.⁸⁶ Although, in Boyd Hilton’s view, this model was an alternative to that of the Christian economists, which was ‘static’ and employed ‘competition as a means to education rather than to growth’, it in fact displayed several affinities with Christian economics, above all in its preoccupation with virtue.⁸⁷ For Nassau Senior, a labourer started to become ‘sober and industrious, attentive to his health and to his character’ when saving money for future use.⁸⁸ This combination of economic optimism and belief in the morally degrading and economically negative impact of public relief represented the intellectual context which favoured the 1834 Poor Law Reform, in which Nassau Senior played a leading role. In Italy, however, defence of the role of the state and of the right to relief continued to be influential in the nineteenth century. In the peninsula attitudes ⁸⁴ B. Hilton, The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought 1785–1865 (2nd edn, Cambridge, 1991); P. Mandler, ‘Tories and Paupers: Christian Political Economy and the Making of the New Poor Law’, Historical Journal, 33 (1990), 81–103. G. Himmelfarb, The Idea of Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Age (London and Boston, 1984), pp. 152–76; A. M. C. Waterman, Revolution, Economics and Religion: Christian Political economy, 1798–1833 (Cambridge, 1991). ⁸⁵ On Senior’s evaluation of Malthus and Ricardo’s legacy see Winch, Riches and Poverty, pp. 373–6; N. W. Senior, Two Lectures on Population, Delivered before the University of Oxford, to which is Added a Correspondence between the Author and the Rev. T.R. Malthus (London, 1829). ⁸⁶ Hilton, The Age of Atonement, p. 245. ⁸⁷ Ibid., p. 69. On Senior’s affinity with the Christian economists see Mandler, ‘Tories and Paupers’. ⁸⁸ N.W. Senior, An Introductory Lecture on Political Economy [1827], in idem, Collected Works, ed. D. Rutherford, 6 vols (Bristol, 1998), i, pp. 11–12.


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to poverty were exemplified by the diverging views of Romagnosi and his school on one side, and Gioja on the other. Gioja, a convinced Malthusian and an advocate of mechanization and industrial growth, denounced both public and private charity. Unlike the English economists of his day, however, Gioja preferred a measure of public relief for the disabled to private charity, since he was an advocate of the role of the state in directing social policy. Conversely, Romagnosi and his school supported the Catholic belief, dominant in the eighteenth century, that relief was a natural right, and that it was the duty of society to show solidarity to that section of society which could not find work. He held English commercial society responsible for the worsening conditions and for increasing the gap between destitute poverty and wealth to an extent unseen in countries like Italy.⁸⁹ The moral approach of English economics and the increasing optimism about the ability of economic growth to reduce poverty, rather than the philanthropic preoccupations of Italian observers, inspired Arrivabene’s writings on poverty and poverty relief. With his Di varie società e instituzioni di beneficenza in Londra, Arrivabene collected in two volumes a comprehensive survey of all the private and public institutions based in London and serving to tackle poverty and to promote the education of the working classes, with the aim of presenting to the Italian public their merits and their shortcomings. Arrivabene claimed to side neither with those who would defend any and every kind of relief nor with those holding the extreme view that all poverty relief was harmful and should be abolished. Rather, he proclaimed that private charity was always to be preferred to public charity, and that the best way for the wealthy classes to help the poor was to encourage education so that they would learn to rely on themselves, and to support charitable institutions for the relief solely of ‘extraordinary misadventures’.⁹⁰ Indeed, laws ought not to invade the private sphere of charity, as this would ‘subvert the natural order of things’. People should be left free to take responsibility for their own conduct, pay the price for their wrong decisions, and be rewarded if they chose to be industrious.⁹¹ Like the critics of the Poor Laws, Arrivabene denounced the abuses which kept wages low and condemned the public relief system. In his view, the latter encouraged ‘immorality’ by preventing people from taking care of their families and from becoming responsible for their own subsistence, ‘obligations ⁸⁹ A. Cherubini, Dottrina e metodi assistenziali dal 1789 al 1848: Italia, Francia, Inghilterra (Milan, 1955), pp. 352–75; G. D. Romagnosi, ‘Del pauperismo britannico’ [1829], in E. Sestan (ed.), Opere di GianDomenico Romagnosi, Carlo Cattaneo, Giuseppe Ferrari (Milan and Naples, 1957), pp. 97–116; idem, ‘Analisi d’un articolo del signor Dumolart sulle cause del malessere sociale in Francia’, in Annali Universali di Statistica, 44 (1835), 20–1; M. Gioja, Problema: Quali sono i mezzi più spediti, più efficaci, più economici per alleviare l’attuale miseria del popolo in Europa (Milan, 1817). ⁹⁰ G. Arrivabene, Di varie società e instituzioni di beneficenza in Londra, 2 vols (Lugano, 1828–32), i, pp. ix–xii; ii, pp. 387–8. ⁹¹ Ibid., i, p. 132.

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that nature, morals, and religion impose on them’.⁹² Given the thrust of his argument, Arrivabene’s reference to Chalmers’s The Christian and Civic Economy of Large Towns as ‘the book most instructive on these matters of poverty’ is perhaps not surprising.⁹³ For Arrivabene, the widespread phenomenon of begging was thus a moral problem fostered by two opposing and intertwined passions, the vice of laziness and that of misplaced compassion. To deal with it, he suggested that along with regulating begging, beggars should be sent from cities to workhouses in the countryside.⁹⁴ Because mendicity was ineradicable, workhouses could not be abolished altogether, but merely limited in number, while private charity should be encouraged.⁹⁵ In spite of the existence of widespread mendicity, Arrivabene warned his Italian readers against exaggerated accounts of the extent and diffusion of poverty in England. Indeed, like Pecchio, he observed that, by Italian standards, very few people in England would be deemed to be paupers: Anyone arriving in England with his mind full of the poverty of the majority of the English people and of the great sum of the poor tax, not coming across poor-looking men other than rarely, would wonder: ‘Where are all these poor, of whom I have heard so much?’ Then in the countryside he would be shown often elegant houses with walls covered in flowers and fruit, and with glass in the windows . . . and well-dressed men with good shoes eating bread made of wheat . . .⁹⁶

Admittedly, commercial crises such as that of 1826 demonstrated that sudden and massive increases in poverty and unemployment were all too possible. However, Arrivabene, like Pecchio, relied on the interpretation of the 1826 crisis advanced by McCulloch in the Edinburgh Review, to argue, therefore, that such events were temporary aberrations triggered by financial speculation, the prohibition of imported foreign wheat, high taxes, and the lack of education of both the working and the commercial classes. What Arrivabene then advocated by way of response was a laissez-faire recipe consisting of free trade, low taxes, the abolition of the Poor Laws combined with Catholic emancipation and the education of the working classes.⁹⁷ Prevention of poverty was thus acceptable only in so far as it abided by ‘the natural order of things’, and stimulated good conduct and parsimony. Arrivabene had in mind here not only the laws of political economy, but also private property and the family, in his view the foundations of society. This is why he condemned the ideas of the Saint-Simonians: their willingness to sacrifice private property and the right of inheritance to higher productivity misunderstood the basic human motives underlying civilization, namely the ⁹² G. Arrivabene, Di varie società e instituzioni di beneficenza in Londra, i, pp. xxv. ⁹³ Ibid., i, p. 388. On public relief and morality compare Arrivabene with T. Chalmers, The Christian and Civic Economy of Large Towns, 3 vols (Glasgow, 1821–6), ii, pp. 229–32. On Chalmers see also B. Hilton, ‘Chalmers as Political Economist’, in A. C. Cheyne (ed.), The Practical and the Pious (Edinburgh, 1985), pp. 141–56. ⁹⁴ Arrivabene, Di varie società, i, pp. 169–70. ⁹⁵ Ibid., ii, pp. 122–3. ⁹⁶ Ibid., i, p. 141. ⁹⁷ Ibid., i, pp. 143.


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selfishness which made human beings work above all else for themselves and for their own families.⁹⁸ A convinced advocate of the development of the manufacturing sector, Arrivabene reminded his readers that in England economic growth had been greatly stimulated by the availability of an industrial labour force freed from agriculture as a consequence of increasing land concentration and capital investment in industry and agriculture.⁹⁹ He thus criticized the attempts made by the ‘Society for the Encouragement of Industry’ to distribute small allotments among the poor. Land distribution was detrimental to the development of the manufacturing sector, the main driver of economic progress. However, he praised craftsmen’s cooperatives whose members supported their own families and lived off their individual labour.¹⁰⁰ What made these associations commendable was, in Arrivabene’s view, the fact that they turned workers into entrepreneurs, since they created profits rather than wages.¹⁰¹ A sphere in which Arrivabene supported active government intervention was that of measures for the encouragement of emigration to create settlements abroad. Relying on the views of Robert Wilmot-Horton, the most passionate advocate of such schemes in this period, he advocated emigration as a useful measure to relieve poverty despite Malthus’s scepticism about its long-term effectiveness in counteracting population pressure.¹⁰² Like Wilmot-Horton and his followers, Arrivabene advanced the idea that using emigration to release the pressure of increasing populations on wage levels would improve the living conditions of the labouring classes.¹⁰³ To preserve the efficacy of these schemes despite the immediate resurgence of population pressures at home, Arrivabene’s sole recommendation was to favour the emigration of the younger generation, rather than that of the elderly and children.¹⁰⁴ Given his endorsement of the prevailing wisdom among contemporary British economists with regard to charitable institutions, Arrivabene’s work was sympathetically reviewed in the English press, which highlighted his rejection of any utopian programme and his defence of property and inequality as the foundations of society.¹⁰⁵ For the Foreign Quarterly Review, his work pointed to the existence of a brand of liberalism compatible with religious principles: ‘Here is a liberal, but in the honourable sense of the word, a native of a Catholic country, an emigrant from Italy, who speaks of religion as the great means of ⁹⁸ Ibid., ii, p. 350. ⁹⁹ Ibid., i, pp. 133–7. On the views of contemporary economists see on these matters Berg, The Machinery Question, pp. 78 ff–89. ¹⁰⁰ Arrivabene, Di varie società, ii, pp. 343–6. ¹⁰¹ Ibid., ii, p. 346. ¹⁰² Ibid., ii, pp. 215–28 where Arrivabene quotes Wilmot-Horton’s An Enquiry into the Causes and Remedies of Pauperism (London, 1830). On Wilmot-Horton and the debate on emigration see D. Winch, Classical Political Economy and Colonies (Cambridge, MA 1965), pp. 51–72, and esp. pp. 52–5. ¹⁰³ Arrivabene, Di varie società, ii, p. 218. ¹⁰⁴ Ibid., ii, pp. 218. ¹⁰⁵ Art.XIV, ‘Considérations sur les principaux moyens d’améliorer le sort des Classes Ouvrières, Par M. Arrivabene, Bruxelles, 1831’, Foreign Quarterly Review, 10 (1832), 261–2.

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improvement of mankind.’¹⁰⁶ Among Italians, however, his uncritical acceptance of British economists’ views on poverty and poverty relief did not go unchallenged. Pellegrino Rossi may have applauded Arrivabene’s research on charitable institutions, but the review articles published by Giuseppe Sacchi in the Lombard Annali Universali di Statistica testify to the controversial reception accorded to Arrivabene’s dissemination of English attitudes towards poverty and charity.¹⁰⁷ For this pupil of Romagnosi, the charitable institutions so carefully described by Arrivabene were evidence not only of the civic virtues of the English upper classes, but also of the social inequalities of English society. In short, they represented the ‘necessary’ palliative to re-establish a veneer of social equilibrium that both the colossal riches and the widespread miseries ‘had caused to disappear for ever’.¹⁰⁸ As an anti-Malthusian, Sacchi thought that the support provided by the Poor Laws represented not an act of charity, but one of justice which did not and could not damage the economy or exacerbate the problem of poverty.¹⁰⁹ Arrivabene further elaborated on these views on poverty in his Considérations sur les principaux moyens d’améliorer le sort des classes ouvrières (1832), where the emphasis was no longer on the charitable institutions, but on the policies needed to tackle poverty itself.¹¹⁰ The thrust of Arrivabene’s argument displays clear affinities with Nassau Senior’s reassessment of the legacy of Malthus and Ricardo, and mirrors the stance adopted by the Welsh economist and by the members of the Political Economy Club since the late 1820s in assessing the challenges posed by the population trap on the perspectives for growth.¹¹¹ Indeed, as in his previous investigations into charitable institutions, Arrivabene praised the intellectual achievements of Malthus, whose name was the only one, along with that of Smith, to be directly mentioned in his Considérations. At the same time, however, Arrivabene endorsed Senior’s optimistic reassessment of the constraints posed by the population trap. For Arrivabene, like Senior, the desire for well-being which stimulated birth-control among civilized nations ‘grows with the growth of civilization, and raises an ever firmer barrier against the overflowing of the population’.¹¹² Thus, while Malthus had called for the ¹⁰⁶ Art.XI., ‘Di varie Società e Istituzioni di Beneficenza in Londra. 1828. 2 vols. 12mo. Lugano’, Foreign Quarterly Review, 11 (1833), 212–22. ¹⁰⁷ Compare P. Rossi ‘Di varie Società e istituzioni . . . [1829] (republished in Arrivabene, Memorie, pp. 309–13) with G. Sacchi, ‘Su varie Società e Instituzioni di Beneficenza in Inghilterra’, Annali Universali di Statistica, 19 (1829), 279–92, and 20, (1829), 205–16. See also G. Sacchi. ‘Ragguaglio delle istituzioni di beneficenza pei poveri, dette comunemente colonie, dell’Autore delle Società di Beneficenza in Londra’, Annali Universali di Statistica, 33 (1832), 120–4. On Sacchi, see S. La Salvia, Giornalismo Lombardo: Gli annali universali di statistica (1824–1844) (Rome, 1977), p. 284. ¹⁰⁸ Sacchi, ‘Su Varie Società’, p. 281. ¹⁰⁹ Ibid., pp. 206–7. ¹¹⁰ Published in Brussels by Lelong. I refer to the Italian version entitled Arrivabene, Dei mezzi più propri a migliorare la sorte degli operai (Lugano, Ruggia, 1832), included in D. Carina (ed.), Alcuni scritti morali ed economici di Giovanni Arrivabene (Florence, 1870). ¹¹¹ See Nassau Senior to A. Quételet, 19 December 1831, quoted in S. Leon Levy, Nassau W. Senior 1790–1864 (Newton Abbot, 1970), p. 305. ¹¹² Arrivabene, Dei mezzi più propri, p. 125.


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preventive checks of self-restraint as measures urgently needed to counter the permanent threat of population growth, Arrivabene considered them to be a fait accompli of modern civilized societies, and noticed that, although in Europe in recent times the population had increased, the means of subsistence had been far greater for everyone.¹¹³ For Arrivabene the well-being of workers and the gradual diminution of poverty depended on maintaining the balance between the work available and the number of workers, and that between the stock of capital and the population. The achievement of this equilibrium would defeat poverty. On this matter, he once more seemed to share the views of the members of the Political Economy Club who, in contrast to Ricardo’s and Malthus’s preoccupation with population pressures, argued that capital increased more rapidly than population. Similarly, Arrivabene claimed that the amount of circulating capital available—which represented the fund for labour—and the population were generally proportionate, and that population could not grow without an adequate availability of capital.¹¹⁴ Indeed, Arrivabene was adamant that it was impossible to root out poverty from society, and that social inequalities were actually beneficial to progress. However, encapsulating in the simple formula of ‘better legislation, better instruction’ the main recipe to tackle poverty, Arrivabene offered some hope that the conditions of the workers would improve under the right conditions, arguing that ‘since the present societies of the civilized world are proceeding, more or less rapidly, in the direction of this improvement, a better future for labourers may be in prospect’.¹¹⁵ He stressed the combined importance of both human intellect and institutions in increasing capital, and thus labour, in agriculture and industry alike, and listed among the best means to stimulate the economy the free exercise of professions, the granting of civil rights to both nationals and foreigners, the development of good means of communication and of free trade as ‘the universal law of nations’.¹¹⁶ That Arrivabene had captured the ‘spirit of his time’ and in particular the optimism of the Political Economy Club is confirmed by the comments of Nassau Senior, who much appreciated Arrivabene’s pamphlet, claimed he had read it with ‘great delight and instruction’ and forwarded it to Benjamin Smith and Malthus.¹¹⁷ Arrivabene’s Anglophilia led him to support enthusiastically the adoption of the English model of development in continental Europe, one based on industrial growth and free trade. In fact there were fundamental differences between Arrivabene’s enthusiasm for all things English and that of Pecchio, and these require spelling out. In Arrivabene we will look in vain for the ¹¹³ Ibid., p. 123. ¹¹⁴ Ibid., p. 127. Compare this with the conclusions of the Political Economy Club debating Ricardo in 1831, quoted in Winch, Riches and Poverty, p. 376. ¹¹⁵ Arrivabene, Dei mezzi, p. 153. ¹¹⁶ Ibid., pp. 112–14. ¹¹⁷ See Nassau Senior to Arrivabene, 7 August 1832, Nassau Senior Papers, C06, NLW.

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observations about geographical or climatic differences that Pecchio employed as evidence for the need for different policies to achieve growth and which were dictated by his belief that political economy was also ‘public economy’. Arrivabene emphasized instead the existence of universally applicable measures and principles valid everywhere to attain economic progress as against the need for specific strategies and measures to account for local circumstances. This is because for him economics was no longer ‘public economy’, a science of government reliant on statistical observations, as it still was for Pecchio and for others loyal to the Italian economic tradition. The economy of the continental countries lagged behind that of England, but the lessons learnt there could be applied to poorer countries on the continent, like Belgium. Arrivabene argued that what constituted the decisive difference between English and Belgian overall production, and thus between the well-being of English and Belgian labourers, was the pre-eminence of manufacturing over agriculture, which in Belgium employed a far higher percentage of the labouring classes. In his judgement the development of the manufacturing sector had a beneficial effect on the whole economy.¹¹⁸ Although Belgium lagged behind England in terms of productivity and expansion of the industrial sector, Arrivabene was convinced that it would soon catch up, thus enabling its agricultural labourers to attain an equally high standard of living.¹¹⁹ Finally, Arrivabene argued that although the English workers enjoying access to the Poor Law regime were better off than the Belgian workers who did not have access to such privileges, the latter were actually generally happier about their circumstances and behaved more morally than the English. In his view this was undoubtedly due to the moralizing effect of work, as ‘the industrious man lives more comfortably than the vagrant, while a man with many children is wealthier than he who has none’.¹²⁰ These reasons, which confirmed Arrivabene’s conviction as to the negative effects of the Poor Laws, were reinforced by the fact that in Belgium journeymen, even if worse off than their English equivalents, were entitled to own a house with a garden, and to rent a plot of land, which undoubtedly contributed to their happiness and to social peace.¹²¹ Arrivabene’s private library included Custodi’s celebrated Raccolta of Italian economists, yet in his economic writings there are no traces of the Italian economic tradition of public happiness and philanthropy defended by Pecchio in his Confronto.¹²² Against the line of argument adopted by Romagnosi and his followers, he was adamant that ‘political economy will never become the science of human happiness’, and in this regard he had turned his back on ¹¹⁸ Arrivabene, A Letter on the Management of the Poor in Belgium, p. 200–1. ¹¹⁹ Ibid., p. 201. ¹²⁰ Ibid., pp. 198–9. ¹²¹ Ibid., p. 199. ¹²² R. Van Nuffel (ed.), L’esilio di Giovanni Arrivabene e il carteggio di Costanza Arconati, 1829–36 (Mantua, 1966), p. lxi.


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the Italian school.¹²³ While supporting the Whiggish platitude that English free institutions had facilitated the economic supremacy of the country, in the mould of contemporary British economists Arrivabene stated that the aim of economics was simply that of ‘investigating the laws regulating production, distribution, the exchange and the consumption of wealth’, and could not make everybody rich and abolish poverty.¹²⁴ Whereas Pecchio in his Confronto had warned against the emancipation of English economic thought from the ethical preoccupation of preserving human dignity, Arrivabene believed that the sole purpose of economics was to discover the laws of production. Arrivabene’s economics completely replaced the ethical concerns of the Italian Enlightenment with those of the Christian economists, and Catholic morality with Protestant atonement. Like Chalmers and Senior, he repudiated the allegation that economics was ‘antichristian, immoral, materialist’; on the contrary, ‘the principles of economics’, he maintained, ‘are entirely in accordance with the precepts of religion and with those of morality’. For Arrivabene the economist’s advice to postpone marriage in order to escape the Malthusian trap was not immoral, but embodied the recognition that people, in preventing the dissemination of misery, had a duty towards others.¹²⁵

TOWA R D S R E P U B L I C A N C O M M E RC I A L S O C I E T I E S : G I A N B AT T I S TA M A RO C H E T T I A N D T H E D E F E N C E O F V I RT U E In the exile community some Italians were far less optimistic than Pecchio about the capacity of contemporary societies to ensure the right balance between individual liberty and civic virtues, between commercial and republican values, and far less convinced than Arrivabene that commercial and industrial forces would ‘naturally’ work against poverty. GianBattista Marochetti may be taken to personify this critical attitude towards contemporary commercial societies. Unlike Arrivabene or Pecchio, however, Marochetti’s observations were not exclusively focused on a comparison between England and Italy, but stemmed from a critique of French society and economy in the aftermath of the July Revolution. Written in Paris, Marochetti’s remarks can be understood in the context of the mounting criticism levelled at the Saint-Simonians and some members of the ‘industrialist’ school after 1825. In the 1820s many liberal publicists felt that without the support of other principles, commercial values could not offer a ¹²³ Arrivabene, ‘Prefazione’ to Principii Fondamentali della Economia Politica tratti da Lezioni Edite ed Inedite del signor N.W. Senior, Professore emerito di economia politica nell’Università di Oxford dal Traduttore di Mill (Milan, 1836), p. 3. ¹²⁴ Ibid., pp. 6, 7. ¹²⁵ Ibid., pp. 20–2.

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firm foundation for society.¹²⁶ Constant, for instance, warned against restricting civilization to material benefits, which could turn human beings into mere ‘industrious animals’. For him, moral concerns, noble sentiments like sacrifice or dedication were as important as material pursuits were to the advancement of modern civilization.¹²⁷ What Constant and other critics of industrialism like Stendhal wanted to vindicate was the importance of civic virtues, which could not simply be replaced by industrie in building a public morality. To the left of liberals like Stendhal and Constant, further attacks on industrialism came from the republicans. For those republicans disappointed with the outcome of the 1830 Revolution the July Monarchy marked the triumph of the industrial and commercial oligarchy. The republican movement combined this attack on France’s commercial oligarchy with a growing concern for the condition of the workers, the primary victims of the extreme commercialization of society.¹²⁸ The Revue Républicaine pointed to the inadequacy of current wage levels, and advocated the creation of workers’ associations; none of the journalists, however, sought to promote hostility between social classes, or to challenge the ownership of the means of production, but wanted to advance a ‘harmony between politics and industry.’¹²⁹ The critique of the excesses of industrial freedom ultimately boiled down to an attack on extreme individualism or negative freedom. As Nadia Urbinati has noted, since the 1820s individualism had come to be seen in France as a major threat to social ties and to cohesion in society.¹³⁰ To the individual rights which the republicans identified with the foundation of ‘liberalism’, was opposed a new ‘social right’. This latter did not imply the forced redistribution of wealth or the establishment of a communist society, but rather, in pure republican terms, a broader awareness of the community’s needs which each single citizen was called to advance through civic participation. What this participation was designed to achieve was preventing the prevalence of private over public interest, of corruption and personal ambition in the name of the public good.¹³¹ ¹²⁶ See, for instance, Stendhal, Di un nuovo complotto contro gli industriali ed. M. Diani (Palermo, 1988). ¹²⁷ B. Constant, ‘De M. Dunoyer, et de quelques-uns de ses ouvrages’, in idem, Mélanges, pp. 128–62. On this aspect of Constant’s liberalism see H. Rosenblatt, ‘Re-evaluating Benjamin Constant’s Liberalism: Industrialism, Saint-Simonianism and the Restoration Years’, History of European Ideas, 30 (2004), 23–37. ¹²⁸ B. H. Moss, ‘Parisian Workers and the Origins of Republican Socialism, 1830–1833’, in J. M. Merriman (ed.), 1830 in France (New and York, London, 1975), pp. 203–17. ¹²⁹ M. Bernard, ‘Sur les moyens de faire descendre la République dans l’atelier’, Revue Républicaine, 5 (1835), 52–68. See also J. F. Dupont, ‘Economie politique, des salaires’, Revue Républicaine, 1 (1834), 159–202. ¹³⁰ N. Urbinati, Individualismo democratico: Emerson, Dewey e la cultura politica americana (Rome, 1997), p. 33. ¹³¹ V. Vandewynckel, ‘Du principe libéral et du principe républicaine’, Revue Républicaine, 3 (1834), 3–26. See also ‘Revue de la presse périodique française et e´trangère’, Revue Républicaine, 348–63.


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In the 1820s Marochetti had enthusiastically espoused the industrialist ideology, convinced as he then was that commerce and industrial manners would bring civilization to Italy, the Mediterranean Islands, as well as Turkey.¹³² However, by 1837, when he set about writing a work on Italy, he had shed much of his earlier optimism: indeed, his observations on the future of Italian society elaborated upon republican concerns regarding the role of commercial and industrial interests in countries like France and England.¹³³ Thus, for Marochetti, the materialism of society, understood as the excessive importance attributed to money by individuals, represented a real threat to public life, and needed to be counterbalanced by a renewed focus on morality.¹³⁴ Marochetti referred to Félicité de Lamennais and Silvio Pellico as the writers who could lead the philosophical reaction against the prevailing materialism and individualism of modern society.¹³⁵ In his view, the greed of a commercial class convinced that liberty lay in ‘the unhindered growth of trade’ dominated the economic and political life of France, England and America alike.¹³⁶ The bourgeoisie, warned Marochetti, had to abandon its oligarchical attitudes if it wished to play its part in the functioning of a republic, and to recognize that its objectives had to be harmonized with those of the rest of the population.¹³⁷ To describe Marochetti’s observations as permeated by ‘anticapitalist attitudes’ and his political stance as that of a ‘moderate’ is to obscure the extent of the debt his arguments owed to the left wing of the liberal party and to the republican movement in its resistance to a certain brand of industrialism.¹³⁸ Rather than advocating an outright rejection of commerce and industry, Marochetti was proposing an alternative model of economic development, which he deemed to be compatible with the aim of maintaining and reinforcing the people’s attachment to the nation and their commitment to the public good. In short, what he was imagining was a republican commercial society contrasting markedly with those to be found in England, France, and North America. There is in fact an industrialist tone to Marochetti’s reaffirmation of his belief that ‘commerce and industry having brought the peoples together [. . .] they now form a single family’. However, he warned that without ‘probité’, order, peace, and unity would be endangered, as would prosperity. In short, commerce had a powerful ¹³² G. B. Marochetti, Indépendence de l’Italie (Paris, 1830). ¹³³ G. B. Marochetti, L’Italie, ce qu’elle doit faire pour figurer enfin parmi les nations indépendantes et libres (Paris, 1837). ¹³⁴ Ibid., p. 115. ¹³⁵ Ibid., p. 82, 83. He refers to Félicité de Lamennais’s Paroles d’un croyant (Paris, 1834), and Silvio Pellico’s Dei doveri dell’uomo: Discorsi ad un giovane (Paris, 1834). ¹³⁶ Marochetti, L’Italie, p. 156. ¹³⁷ Ibid., pp. 178–9. On this widespread although misplaced belief see P. Pilbeam, The 1830 Revolution in France (London, 1991), p. 148. ¹³⁸ According to F. Della Peruta, in his Mazzini e i rivoluzionari italiani: Il partito d’azione 1830–1845 (Milan, 1974), pp. 325–6.

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positive effect on civilization if did not go beyond what Marochetti believed to be its legitimate limits. This is why he believed that governments should encourage and protect not only industry, but also agricultural production, and that the population, rather than crowding into the cities, should resettle in the countryside, according to the model of the ancient Roman colonies.¹³⁹ Industrial monopolies, like aristocratic rents, had to be abolished. Sumptuary laws should be introduced to limit luxury. Rather than hampering industry, Marochetti maintained that these measures would facilitate a more equitable distribution of wealth among people, according to a model of republican economy based on moderate wealth and moral commerce advocated some thirty years before by Say in his Traité.¹⁴⁰ With Sismondi, Marochetti warned against the impact of excessive mechanization on employment and wages, and drew attention to the danger of continuous commercial crises due to overproduction. Unchecked industrial growth and the resulting social tensions led Marochetti to believe that the entire civilized world risked being shaken by major economic and social upheavals. Sound principles of political economy along with morality could reverse this trend and help provide better living conditions for the labouring classes.¹⁴¹ To tackle commercial crises, he advocated higher wages for the workers and a policy of public works, and dismissed England’s poor-rate as a wretched attempt to solve the problem of poverty. The condition of the labouring classes could be further improved with the aid of a provincial system of banks serving to render landed property mobile, and to make capital available.¹⁴² Marochetti’s programme can be summarized as the restoration of virtue in society as against the dominance of materialism and the selfish pursuit of commercial gain. He referred to both Montesquieu and Rousseau as the philosophers who had best understood the importance of virtue.¹⁴³ Identifying virtue with probity, Marochetti distinguished between civil or social virtue, which defined interpersonal relations in society, and political virtue or public spirit, or ‘the courage to defend the patria and its institutions against any aggression’, a quality only possible in a free polity. In a discussion reminiscent of Rousseau, he claimed that, although having different ends, each virtue was closely dependent on the other, since civil freedom was the ultimate goal of political freedom, without which civil rights could not exist. Conversely, Marochetti was convinced that, if citizens did not practise civil virtue, political virtue could not be exercised.¹⁴⁴ ¹³⁹ Marochetti, L’Italie, pp. 91, 95. ¹⁴⁰ Ibid., pp. 91–3. Compare to Say, Traité, ii, pp. 349–51, 354, 356, 379–81. ¹⁴¹ Marochetti, L’Italie, p. 93. ¹⁴² Ibid., pp. 120, 121, 122. ¹⁴³ Marochetti quotes Montesquieu at pp. 158, 161,and Rousseau at pp. 165, 166, and passim. On Montestesquieu’s republic see J. Shklar, ‘Montesquieu and the New Republicanism’, in G. Block, Q. Skinner, and M. Viroli (eds), Machiavelli and Republicanism (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 265–79. ¹⁴⁴ Marochetti, L’Italie, 158, 159.


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Located somewhere between the left wing of the liberal party and the republicans, Marochetti does not deserve the traditional label of ‘moderate’. Rather, his ideas demonstrated the existence of a liberal-democratic element among the post-1821 exile community, hostile to the views of the more conservative patriots like Pecchio, Dal Pozzo and Arrivabene, but also alternative to Mazzini.¹⁴⁵ Given his conviction that a ‘republican’ monarchy according to Lafayette’s conceptualization was the best possible solution for Italy, Marochetti can be taken as representative of a position to which other Piedmontese liberals such as Lorenzo Valerio belonged, and which combined democratic tenets with more conservative ones.¹⁴⁶ A similar republican critique of modern commercial societies was advanced by, for instance, the former Napoleonic general Filippo De Meester, who challenged the English political economists’ view that large estates and great commercial enterprises were vital to ensure economic development. After several years in exile in England, in 1833 he had moved to France, where his ideas reveal both the influence of his English experience and some knowledge of French republican debates. In a set of unpublished papers on ‘republican representative governments’ written around 1835, he argued that a distribution of property among the population would guarantee a more equitable distribution of wealth, a fair availability of consumer goods and the gradual disappearance of luxury goods. De Meester maintained that England proved that it was possible to create commercial enterprises without great concentrations of capital, for example companies owned by many small shareholders set up to build infrastructures or great factories. While condemning communism, he thus supported workers’ cooperatives and experiments like Owen’s New Lanark.¹⁴⁷ What is perhaps the most interesting aspect of these discussions was the idea that the advancement of virtue represented a fundamental precondition for the success of liberal propaganda. Nadia Urbinati has come to the conclusion that in the early nineteenth century French critics of individualism saw their republican values as alternative to liberalism, rather than to socialism.¹⁴⁸ For Marochetti or De Meester, however, there was no distinction, but rather identity, between liberal and republican values and their social agenda. Their republicanism was indeed liberal, in so far as they saw civic virtues and participation as vital means to protect individual freedom. Although many contemporary French republicans pitted their cause against that of the liberal party, on the grounds that it was exclusively concerned with individual liberty, the struggle for the re-establishment ¹⁴⁵ Marochetti’s attack on Mazzini’s idea is in L’Italie, p. 190. ¹⁴⁶ M. Thom, ‘ ‘‘Neither Fish nor Fowl?’’ The Correspondence of Lorenzo Valerio, 1825–1849’, Modern Italy, 11 (2006), 305–26. ¹⁴⁷ E’ egli possibile un governo repubblicano rappresentativo? Problema risoluto da un vecchio repubblicano, Carte De Meester, c. 2 b (4) 2, Fondo Esuli, MRM. De Meester published these comments on the republican economy in his Della Repubblica democratica-rappresentativa (Milan, 1848), pp. 17–20. ¹⁴⁸ Urbinati, Individualismo democratico, p. 42.

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of virtue and the defence of social rights in the modern commercial world lay at the heart of their liberal agenda.¹⁴⁹

C O N C LU S I O N S For Pecchio and Arrivabene, England represented the epitome of civilization and progress, a model which successfully combined political freedom and maximum economic well-being to a degree unprecedented in history. Both of them defended the benefits of English industrial and commercial wealth as well as the views of Malthus in the face of the criticism of Romagnosi and his school, and played an important role in facilitating the transmission of the English economic model to Italy. However, they did so with at least partially different intellectual means. Arrivabene’s defence of England was indebted to the sophisticated theoretical tools provided by contemporary British economists. Pecchio became an equally passionate Anglophile not only by adopting the views of the Edinburgh Review, but also thanks to a re-elaboration of eighteenth-century commercial ideology. His faith in progress, as embodied in the economic growth and patriotism of English society, owed much to Italian economists like Verri and Genovesi. It is important to remind ourselves that Marochetti, Pecchio, and Arrivabene, despite their differences, all took their respective views on commercial society to represent fully achieved models of liberalism. What I have sought to demonstrate is that the different brands of economic liberalism the exiles developed were neither backward nor inadequate for engaging with current European debates on commercial society. The same goes for the model of society they were defending. There is no disputing the fact that the views of Pecchio and Arrivabene were socially conservative. While they considered the rise of the middle class as a crucial social phenomenon in contemporary England, and one on which the success of English patriotism, the advancement of individual rights, and the rise of commercial society all depended, they were also willing to give qualified support to the role of the aristocracy. Yet there was nothing exceptional or backward about these views: there were in truth many early nineteenth-century liberals for whom support for industrial transformation, economic liberalism, and the laws of political economy could well go hand in hand with the defence of landed interests. As Peter Mandler has argued, British landed gentry were already endorsing the principles of economic individualism long before 1830. In his own words, ‘there was no contradiction perceived between an espousal of economic liberalism and social and political conservatism; they were more likely to go together than not.’¹⁵⁰ Indeed, a political economist like Nassau Senior regretted ¹⁴⁹ Marochetti, L’Italie, p. 158.

¹⁵⁰ Mandler, ‘Tories and Paupers’, p. 85.


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the gradual erosion of the role of the nobility in Europe; as a consequence of the disappearance of ‘the smaller knots of resistance’ against central power, he wrote that Europe ‘appears to me to be becoming Asiatic’.¹⁵¹ It is also worth noting that, from a conceptual point of view, the economic liberalism of the Italian exiles was fully conversant with European developments. Notwithstanding their concern with individual rights, and in spite of their different views as to the role of virtue in economic discourse, they all agreed that civic virtue was needed both in the economic and in the political sphere. All of them thought that political virtue and industriousness had to be reconciled, although they disagreed on the social model and political measures to be adopted in order to favour the harmonious development of both the political and economic sphere. This is likewise true, it should be remembered, of the majority of exiled liberals discussed in the previous chapters, who, when advocating the globalization of freedom and commerce, or praising the new Spanish American republics, foresaw an important role for civic virtues as well as for commerce and industriousness. Yet again this emphasis on republican notions of freedom was not exceptional on the continent, and should indeed serve to remind us of the primarily political nature of the Italian liberals’ interest in commercial matters: economic reform was an essential element of their political programme of national regeneration. What set them apart, at any rate in the case of Pecchio and Marochetti, was the adoption of ideas and arguments drawn from Italian writers and thinkers (Pellico in the case of Marochetti, the Italian tradition of the Enlightenment in the case of Pecchio). Finally, their work demonstrates also how exile could play very different but equally important roles in the transmission of ideas between England, Italy, and Europe. Pecchio provided the Italian and European public with a positive image of England, and lauded the achievements of English economics, Ricardo excepted, although it was not his purpose to disseminate their analytical findings. Rather, he did much to make the Italian school of economic thought known abroad. Arrivabene was indefatigable in his study of the British political economists, whose findings he popularized not only through his pamphlets but also by means of his translations of the unpublished lectures of James Mill and Nassau Senior from English into Italian and French.¹⁵² Contrary to the widely held view that Italian economic thought was impervious to British classical political economy, and that Italian economists were hostile to it, the diffusion of such ¹⁵¹ Nassau Senior, Conversations with M.Thiers, M.Guizot and Other Distinguished Persons, 2 vols (London, 1878), i, p. 402. ¹⁵² See J. Mill, Elementi di Economia Politica (Lugano, 1830); N. W. Senior, Due lezioni sulla Popolazione recitate nell’Università di Oxford l’anno 1828 da Guglielmo Nassau Senior Professore Economia Politica a cui è aggiunta una corrispondenza tra l’autore ed il sig. Malthus recati in Italiano dal traduttore di Mill (Lugano, 1834); N.W. Senior, Principes Fondamentaux de l’Economie Politique . . . par le Cte Jean Arrivabene (Paris 1836); and the above-mentioned Italian translation as Principii Fondamentali.

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works testifies to the circulation of classical economics in Italy at a crucial moment in the development of its theoretical tools. Admittedly, Arrivabene’s views on poverty were opposed by the Romagnosian school. Yet Arrivabene’s laissez-faire stance and his belief, shared by economists such as Gioja and later by Cavour, that poverty relief should not be given to the able-bodied, would become common currency among Risorgimento moderates, who tended to combine these convictions with a commitment to the role of central administrations in the management of social problems.¹⁵³ Of all the exiles, however, it was Pecchio who would leave the most important intellectual legacy for Risorgimento economics. His ‘Confronto’ became one of the most widely quoted texts among Italian patriots describing the differences between Italian and English economic schools. In the wake of Pecchio most Risorgimento intellectuals continued to regard economics as ‘public economy’. Thanks to Pecchio and to Romagnosi and his school, public happiness as the greatest possible happiness for the greatest number continued to be seen as a goal of this discipline, although Italian intellectuals were ready to complement this approach with the theoretical findings of the English economics Arrivabene sought to disseminate. Also Pellegrino Rossi, in his widely read lectures on political economy written in Paris, while arguing in favour of the full independence of the economic science from any other discipline, maintained that economic policies should always take into account moral principles when dealing with social questions, even when they seemed to go against free competition.¹⁵⁴ Although the notion of economia pubblica, and the approach upheld by Verri and the eighteenth-century economists was harshly criticized by Francesco Ferrara, it found more supporters than detractors in Italy until at least the 1860s.¹⁵⁵ From Romagnosi to Giuseppe Montani, from Lodovico Bianchini to Antonio Scialoja and Marco Minghetti, the quest for a reconciliation between morality, public happiness, and wealth underpinned Italian economic writings. It is in this combination of French and English theories in a framework such that economics is still public economy, and public happiness the objective of the discipline, that the distinctive quality of the Risorgimento’s economic thought lay. What made Pecchio’s ‘Confronto’ so appealing was its defining of a middle ground between two different concerns widely shared by Risorgimento moderate patriots. The book’s popularity stemmed from its capacity to reconcile the idea of economic progress in the English vein with a concern for the prevention of the most ¹⁵³ S. Woolf, ‘The Poor and How to Relieve Them: The Restoration Debate on Poverty in Italy and Europe’, in J. Davis and P. Ginsborg (eds), Society and Politics in the Age of the Risorgimento: Essays in Honour of Denis Mack Smith (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 49–69. ¹⁵⁴ P. Rossi, Cours d’économie politique [1836–7], 3 vols (Paris, 1840–51), i, pp. 30–2, 35–7, 284–90. ¹⁵⁵ On Ferrara’s isolation in the context of Italian economics see also M. Guidi, ‘Economia politica ed economia sociale nelle riviste moderate piemontesi di metà Ottocento (1838–1860)’, in M. Augello, M. Bianchini, and M. Guidi (eds), Le riviste di economia in Italia (1700–1900): Dai giornali scientifico-letterari ai periodici specialistici (Milan, 1996), pp. 233–63.


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damaging social consequences of industrialization, by defending some aspects of the ‘public happiness’ approach of the Italian eighteenth-century economists.¹⁵⁶ This is true in spite of the fact that several nineteenth-century Italian intellectuals, being more critical of English commercial society than the exiles, resorted to Pecchio’s text to condemn unreservedly the ‘dry osteology’ of English economics and commercial society, against the author’s original intention.¹⁵⁷ Perhaps the most important legacy left to the Risorgimento by Pecchio was the fact that after him economics in Italy would remain for a long time to come a scienza dell’amor patrio. This idea was embraced by most Risorgimento liberals in the succeeding years, and endorsed by Cavour, Scialoja, and Ferrara.¹⁵⁸ The success of Pecchio’s formula stemmed from its capacity to encapsulate several of the moderates’ concerns, offering as it did a model of development which endorsed at one and the same time social and economic inequalities, constitutional liberties, and the desire to revaluate the Italian intellectual heritage. What made it such a successful slogan was the fact that it served to forge a direct link between the study of economics as a means of advancing the economic progress of Italy and the objective of establishing Italy as an independent nation. ¹⁵⁶ On the idea of public happiness in the Risorgimento see Isabella, ‘Riformismo settecentesco e Risorgimento’. For the popularity of Pecchio’s ‘confronto’ see at least C. Ugoni, Vita e scritti di Giuseppe Pecchio (Parigi, 1836), p. 37. E. de Tipaldo (ed.), Biografie degli italiani illustri, 10 vols (Venice, 1834–45), iv, pp. 246–7. G. Capponi, ‘Di alcune antiche notizie intorno all’economia toscana (letta nel 1830). Memorie’, in idem, Cinque Letture di economia toscana (Florence, 1845), pp. 18–19, 47. ¹⁵⁷ See, for intance, L. Landucci, ‘Studi sulle scienze sociali. Opera del sig. Sim. de Sismondi’, Giornale Agrario Toscano, 12 (1838), 16–46. Pecchio is mentioned at p. 42.; L. Bianchini, Della scienza del ben vivere sociale e dell’economia degli stati, (Palermo, 1845), pp. 215 and ff, 370–1. C. I. Petitti di Roreto, ‘Del lavoro dei fanciulli nelle manifatture. Dissertazione (1841)’, in idem, Opere Scelte, ed. G. M. Bravo, 2 vols ( Turin, 1969), i, p. 633. ¹⁵⁸ On Ferrara and Pecchio see R. Faucci, L’economista scomodo: Vita e opere di Francesco Ferrara (Palermo, 1995), p. 20. See also A. Scialoja, I Principi dell’economia sociale ( Turin, 1846), p. 196. On Pecchio and Cavour see R. Romeo, Cavour e il suo tempo, 3 vols (Bari, 1969–84), i, p. 291.

8 Narrating the Risorgimento to the English Public It is well known what these courteous and truthful travellers do. As soon as they have gathered erudite information from the so-called Ciceroni, nonsense from servants in the square, saucy anecdotes in capital cities, news of some theft in the public roads, and all the other amenities which fill the books of Stendhal, of Simond, and of many other English travellers, who judge the Italians by looking at how a cat in an osteria picks a morsel of meat from a table, they cobble together a beautiful volume, labelling all the 20 million inhabitants of Italy as assassins, all women as dissolute, and superstitious, mean, lazy, and beggars. The Italians who travel will not be short of material to give tit for tat to foreigners, if they wanted to collect all their love affairs in Paris, London, and the other European cities.¹

AU TO - E T H N O G R A PHY A N D T H E R I S O RG I M E N TO : R E S P O N D I N G TO T H E G R A N D TO U R Travel literature represented the most influential vehicle for the description and transmission of the political and social conditions of the Italian peninsula in Europe. After the Napoleonic parenthesis British tourists flocked back to the peninsula and opened a new era in the history of the Grand Tour. In this period the traditional interest of the British elites for Italian antiquity developed into a fashion for Italian language, culture, and history, which has been appropriately described as an ‘Italomania’.² A fundamental feature of the foreign travellers’ attitude, at least since the seventeenth century, was the derogatory nature of their assessment of contemporary Italy, based on the assumption that Italian society was in decay, that the Italians had lost the virtues of their ancestors, and that they lagged behind in the movement of human progress represented by northern European countries. Since eighteenth-century travellers, from Addison onwards, had been primarily interested in Italy’s classical past, the continuous comparison between the country’s ancient glories and its current degradation ¹ G. Pepe, ‘Le Mexique, par I. C. Beltrami’, Antologia, 39 (1830), p. 119. ² In the words of C. P. Brand, in his Italy and the English Romantics (Cambridge, 1957), p. 3.

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led to a disparaging attitude towards the Italians, who were blamed for having gradually dismantled their precious cultural and political heritage. Poverty, moral destitution, and violence were the hallmarks of Italian backwardness. Indeed, in the eyes of the Grand Tourists, the magnificent cultural residues from the past overshadowed any sign of contemporary cultural activity.³ These views continued to affect the way in which British tourists looked at Italy after 1815. The writings of men of letters like Charles MacFarlane and William Stewart Rose, who had particularly close ties with the Italian exile community and admired the intellectual talents of Foscolo and Pecchio, are a case in point. For MacFarlane, Italy was ‘the land of brigandism par excellence’.⁴ This phenomenon represented evidence of the moral as well as civil backwardness of Italy, which could only be partially condoned as a result of the Italians’ passion for love and emotionality.⁵ William Stewart Rose confirmed this perception of the degradation of Italian society and the Italian national character in his Letters from the North of Italy, published in 1819. Rose attributed the widespread poverty he observed everywhere to bad government and to the punitive nature of taxation throughout the peninsula.⁶ In addition, he was pessimistic about the Italians’ ability to form a nation, given the ‘spirit of faction arising out of the great divisions of Italy’. Employing a particularly damning comparison, Rose blamed the political divisions for teaching the lower Italians ‘to consider each other much as the Arabian tribes regard those who are not of the same lineage and kindred’.⁷ The following pages deal first with the Italian exiles’ reactions to the travellers’ representations of Italian history, culture, and national character in the early nineteenth century. In particular, the first sections address Foscolo’s articles on the Grand Tourists’ representations of Italy, and the comments of Pecchio, Salfi and Botta on Lady Morgan’s famous travel literature and historical novels. These reactions will be assessed in the context of the broader intellectual dialogue established between Italian and northern European elites in the early nineteenth century. As Nelson Moe has argued, the Grand Tourists’ description of Italy influenced not only western perceptions of Italy, but also determined the ways in which Italians defined themselves in the nineteenth century. The notion of being confined to the civil and cultural periphery of Europe, and the perception of southern Italy as a space outside civilized Europe was absorbed by the Italian elites in the nineteenth century thanks to their exposure to northern European stereotypes. While Moe recognizes the importance of transnational ³ A. Brilli, Quando viaggiare era un’arte: Il romanzo del Grand Tour (Bologna, 1995). An assessment of the historiography on the topic is now in B. A. Naddeo, ‘Cultural Capitals and Cosmopolitanism in Eighteenth-Century Italy: The Historiography and Italy on the Grand Tour’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 10 (2005), 183–99. ⁴ C. MacFarlane, The Lives and Exploits of Banditti and Robbers in all Parts of the World, 2 vols (London, 1833), i, p. 5. ⁵ Ibid., pp. 6, 16. ⁶ W. S. Rose, Letters from the North of Italy, 2 vols (London, 1919), ii, p. 202. ⁷ Ibid., i, p. 289.

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dynamics in the process of identity formation in Italy, he does not give specific space to the Italians’ comments on the Grand Tour. Likewise Maura O’Connor’s accounts of the role of English culture in the creation of Italian identity leaves out the Italian voices in the dialogue between Italy and England in the early nineteenth century.⁸ Given the influence of travel literature in setting the criteria employed to judge Italy, the exiles felt that they had to make their own views known. By giving priority to the specific point of view of the Italians, the extent to which the Grand Tourists’ authority was questioned or endorsed can be verified, and its impact on the exiles’ perception of Italian identity evaluated. By so doing, I hope to cast some light on the relationship established between travellers and travelled in the era of the Romantic Grand Tour, and demonstrate its importance in shaping the national consciousness of the Italian patriots. In addition I intend to explore the extent to which, in spite of the influence and importance of Grand Tour literature, the exiles were determined to challenge many of the arguments and stereotypes of the travellers and to advance their own independent idea of Italy. In fact, whereas the exiles may have been in a ‘defensive’ posture when responding to the Grand Tour’s representations, they were also capable of making a compelling case to convince their friends of the urgent need for the political regeneration of the peninsula. In other words, they were not only busy creating the Risorgimento on their own terms, they also took the time and the effort to communicate it to the English public. In this respect, they had the formidable advantage of being closely connected to some of the most influential political figures and opinion-makers of Great Britain through Holland House, where politicians, intellectuals, and journalists met together to discuss politics and literature. This chapter, then, looks at the arguments employed by the exiles to convince their English counterparts of the need for independence from Austria, the tropes and rhetorical language devised to make their views more compelling, and the strategies adopted to influence the politicians’ views of ‘the Italian question’. Maura O’Connor has shown just how successful Mazzini was in gaining the support of vast sections of the educated public and of middle-class reformers for his cause in the 1840s and ’50s in Britain.⁹ Yet the extent to which the earlier generation of exiles managed to shape at least some of the English views about the Risorgimento still requires investigation. This will in turn enable us to judge whether Mazzini’s success was prepared by these earlier efforts, and in what ways their communication strategies differed from his. My analysis of the exiles’ campaign against English views of Italy will commence with Foscolo’s articles. ⁸ N. Moe, The View from Vesuvius: Italian Culture and the Southern Question (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 2002); M. O’Connor, The Romance of Italy and the English Political Imagination (New York, 1998). ⁹ O’ Connor, The Romance of Italy, pp. 57–92.; on this topic see also M. Isabella, ‘Italian Exiles and British Politics before and After 1848’, in S. Freitag (ed.), Exiles from European Revolutions: Refugees in Mid-Victorian England (New York and Oxford, 2003), pp. 59–87.


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‘Through a Fanciful Magnifying Glass’: Ugo Foscolo and ‘The Classical Tours of Italy’ The nineteenth century marked a turning point in travel literature. On the one hand, the political conditions of contemporary Italy became the object of more serious investigations, which were not simply occasional comments in the margins of erudite dissertations. On the other, the influence of Romantic sensibilities led to the Grand Tour’s becoming more and more a sentimental experience, which enabled English travellers, and especially women, to express emotions with a degree of freedom impossible at home, and to give free rein to their imagination. In Chloe Chard’s words, the Grand Tour ‘became an adventure of the self ’.¹⁰ As Maura O’Connor has argued, British travellers visiting Italy in the early nineteenth century ‘delighted in adding a bit of the imaginary to the real; thus their vision of Italy [. . .] was highly idealised and romanticized’. The vision of Italy they proposed thus remained firmly based on the emotions, regardless of their intention to cloak it in historical analysis, displays of erudition and admiration for classical culture.¹¹ The Romantic attitude towards Italy explains also why many early nineteenth-century travellers took Mme de Staël’s celebrated novel Corinne as a guidebook. In it Italy was represented metaphorically as freedom from tradition, artistic creativity, rebellion against aristocratic values and aspiration to political emancipation, and the main character, Corinne, embodied the vices and virtues of the Italian national character.¹² Published in 1813 and based on his visit to the peninsula between 1802 and 1803, John Chetwode Eustace’s Classical Tour reflected the passage from the eighteenth-century obsession with antiquities to nineteenth-century curiosity about politics, history, and landscape. Indeed, as Eustace explained in his ‘Preface’, his allegiance was to the tradition of the Grand Tour as an experience presupposing the study of the classics, and therefore a passion for medals and other ancient objects. Eustace viewed English institutions as a reference point against which to judge Italy: vindicating the superiority of English liberty and patriotism, he claimed this pride should ‘excite sentiments of compassion and sympathy’ towards less fortunate countries.¹³ Along with his belief in the perfection of ¹⁰ C. Chard, Pleasure and Guilt on the Grand Tour: Travel Writing and Imaginative Geography 1600–1830 (Manchester, 1991), p. 182. ¹¹ O’Connor, The Romance of Italy, p. 54. ¹² On this aspects of Corinne see D. Y. Kadish, ‘Narrating the French Revolution’, in M. Gutwirth, A. Goldberber, and K. Szmurlo (eds), Germaine de Staël: Crossing the Borders (New Bruswick, 1991), pp. 117–18. On the adoption of Corinne as travel book see O’Connor, The Romance of Italy, p. 27. ¹³ J. C. Eustace, A Classical Tour through Italy [1813], 2 vols (London, 1815), i, pp. xiv–xv, quotation from p. 22. J. H. Whitfield, ‘Mr Eustace and Lady Morgan’, in C. P. Brand, K. Foster, and U. Limentani (eds), Italian Studies Presented to Eric Reginald Vincent (Cambridge, 1962), pp. 166–89.

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the English mixed constitution, Eustace maintained a visceral aversion for all things French, and especially the French idea of liberty. With this attitude Eustace judged French government in the peninsula, which he condemned for having put an end to the existence of the ancient republics of the peninsula and established a predatory regime.¹⁴ Eustace’s work was the main if not the exclusive target of Foscolo’s unpublished ‘Classical Tours’, and his ‘Antiquarians and Critics’, which appeared in 1824 in the European Review. Remarks made in response to the Grand Tourists’ comments on Italian society and culture appeared in a number of his other essays, including his ‘Learned Ladies’ of 1821. In ‘Antiquarians and Critics’ Foscolo described Eustace’s comments on Italy as ‘puerile, endless and ridiculous blunders’, and condescendingly labelled him as a ‘literary charlatan in good faith’.¹⁵ What made the content of his Classical Tour even more intolerable in Foscolo’s eyes was that it was combined with ‘the superior manners of his own countrymen’.¹⁶ Foscolo’s objections to Eustace were manifold, and related to several aspects of his book. To begin with, he was dissatisfied with Eustace’s treatment of contemporary Italian history, and in particular with his critical assessment of the impact of Napoleonic government on Italy. As Foscolo conceded, Italian public opinion at the end of the Napoleonic period resented Napoleonic authoritarian rule, and with good reason. Yet he was also keen to stress that this government had had many advantages, most of which disappeared at the Austrian restoration, including investments which were beneficial to the economy and to the well-being of the population.¹⁷ Secondly, Foscolo rebuked Eustace for his excessive admiration for Mme de Staël’s Corinne. Such reliance on Corinne reflected a dangerous tendency to view the real Italy through the lens of Romantic fiction, and thus to perceive a distorted image, a tendency exacerbated by the fact that for many readers that novel remained their sole source of knowledge regarding Italy. As a result, the English public would ‘peruse [. . .] a novel as a tour and a classical tour as a novel’.¹⁸ In Foscolo’s opinion, the consequence of this fictional, romanticized attitude towards all things Italian was to fill travel books both with poetic reveries, owing to the travellers’ tendency ‘to look at every object through a fanciful magnifying glass’, and with preposterous blunders about places, facts, and historical events.¹⁹ That this was a defining feature of contemporary travel literature, and that many travel books were strewn with errors, is beyond dispute. Yet what is important to understand is that the primary cause of Foscolo’s outrage was ¹⁴ Eustace, A Classical Tour, i, pp. viii, xx. ¹⁵ Foscolo, ‘Intorno ad antiquari e critici’, in EN, 11, II, p. 315. ¹⁶ Foscolo, ‘Classical Tours’ [1823], EN, 11, II, pp. 227–68, quotation at p. 249. ¹⁷ Foscolo, ‘Classical Tours’, p. 242. G. Barbarisi, ‘La Rivoluzione francese e Napoleone nella riflessione del Foscolo in Inghilterra’, Rivista Italiana di Studi Napoleonici, 29 (1992), 283–307. ¹⁸ Foscolo, ‘Classical Tours’, p. 266. ¹⁹ Ibid., p. 248.


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not the annoyance of an intellectual at the lack of philological accuracy. If he took offence at Eustace’s Romantic distortions it was fundamentally because the tourists, in reinventing places and facts, were undermining the very foundation of Italian national consciousness, its cultural heritage. Hence Foscolo’s passionate defence of the work of Lodovico Antonio Muratori, inexplicably ignored by Addison, and absurdly confused by Eustace with Tiraboschi.²⁰ While Addison had complained about the lack of any memory of liberty in Italy, Foscolo viewed Muratori in proto-nationalist terms, as a writer who had not only defended the ‘independence of nations against the usurpations of the Church and of religions against monks and friars’, but who had also compiled a formidable collection of documents from the Italian Middle Ages, thereby demonstrating the importance of that period of Italian history for the resurgence of European civilization. Further developing his defence of Muratori and Tiraboschi in his article on ‘Antiquarians and Critics’, Foscolo upheld the qualities and achievements of these great Italian antiquarians, observing that without their collections the philosophical histories of Gibbon, Roscoe and Sismondi could never have been written. For Foscolo, their passion for detail and scrupulous concern for the authenticity of documents, far from representing sterile erudition, would curb ‘the imagination of those who take advantage of it; and thus lead history to be not politically partisan, but judge, founding every principle and consequence exclusively on truth’.²¹ This final word of warning, it should be noted, was addressed to the foreign travellers in particular. But Foscolo’s national pride also led him to reaffirm the special place of Italian philosophical history in Europe: if Gibbon had been in many ways superior to Muratori, Foscolo also believed that the historical reflections of Montesquieu and Robertson owed much to Machiavelli.²² Elsewhere he stated that it was ‘under the influence of his [Dante’s] genius, that we may date the commencement of the literary history of Europe’.²³ In order to understand the intellectual roots of this attitude it is important to look back at the early years of the Napoleonic period. Although the Neapolitan philosophers of the Enlightenment had already started to respond to the Grand Tourists’ representations of Naples, it was only in the context of the patriotic revival of the Napoleonic era that the attacks of Italian intellectuals on the Grand Tourists took on a more national overtone, encouraged as they were by the cultural policy of President Melzi. Vincenzo Monti’s lectures at the University of Pavia epitomize this new tendency, which linked the dismissal of the foreigners’ condescending attitudes with the vindication of an Italian primacy in the sciences and arts, arising out of the nation’s particular intellectual genius. In similar terms Baron Custodi in 1803 declared that the publication of the collection of the ²⁰ Ibid., pp. 232 , 240. ²¹ Foscolo, ‘Intorno ad antiquari e critici’, in EN, 11, II, pp. ²² Foscolo, ‘Antiquarians and Critics’, pp. 321. ²³ Foscolo, ‘Dante’ (Edinburgh Review, 1818), now in EN, 9, I, 2–55, at pp. 3–4.

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fifty-volume Scrittori classici italiani di economia politica was intended to vindicate the qualities of Italians at a time when foreign travellers tended to portray Italians in the same way as ‘colonizers would describe their black slaves as brutal in order to keep them in captivity’.²⁴ For Foscolo, as for Monti or Custodi, the defence of Italian culture and its historical primacies was part of an effort to underpin a new form of political patriotism, which referred to Italian culture in order to justify Italy’s right to independence. Foscolo’s condemnation of Eustace and his passionate defence of Italy’s culture did not imply an outright dismissal of all travel literature. Indeed, he did not reject all the Grand Tourists’ observations. On the contrary, he drew upon other accounts in order to show the mores of the Italians in a more favourable light. What immediately strikes the reader of Foscolo’s ‘Classical Tours’, is the predominance in the text of direct quotations from foreign travellers like Addison, Eustace, Mme de Staël, Forsyth, and Galiffe: Foscolo builds most of his arguments by interposing ‘discreet’ interventions betwixt and between the travel writers’ excerpts, and plays them off against each other in order to prove his points.²⁵ As a consequence, Foscolo constructs his views as to what Italians are like less through his personal observations than through the pages of the travellers he reviews. Foscolo’s subtle manipulation of Forsyth’s comments can help us understand the strategy he employed to make his case.²⁶ He was ready to concede that the upper classes, and especially the aristocracy in Italy, were corrupted, and that their lack of morality had much to do with the political status of the peninsula. He further agreed with Forsyth that Roman women were none too modest, a fault due in the main to the proliferation of male celibacy in the city, and yet he quoted the English traveller to lend support to the idea ²⁴ On eighteenth-century Italian reactions to the Grand Tour, see M. Calaresu, ‘Looking for Virgil’s Tomb: The End of the Grand Tour and the Cosmopolitan Ideal in Europe’, in J. Elsner and J.-P. Rubies (eds), Voyages and Visions: Towards a Cultural History of Travel (London, 1999), pp. 138–61. V. Monti, ‘Dell’obbligo di onorare i primi scopritori del vero in fatto di scienze’, in idem, D. Tongiorgi and L. Frassineti (eds), Lezioni di eloquenza e Prolusioni Accademiche (Bologna, 2002), pp. 237–71. Monti’s attack on Lalande’s Voyage d’un Français en Italie was taken on by the Nuovo Giornale dei Letterati in 1804, now republished in Tongiorgi and Frassineti, pp. 420–9. On Monti’s criticism of travel literature see also P. Hazard, La Révolution Française et les lettres Italiennes 1789–1815 (Paris, 1910), pp. 288–90. P. Custodi, ‘Proemio dell’editore’, in idem (ed.), Scrittori classici italiani di economia politica, 50 vols (Milan, 1803–16), i, pp. xii–xvi. ²⁵ The travel literature mentioned in his review included, besides Eustace, J. Addison’s Remarks on Several Parts of Italy in the years 1701, 1702, 1703 (London, 1753); J. Forsyth’s Remarks on Antiquities, Arts, and Letters during an Excursion in Italy, in . . . 1802 and 1803 (London, 1813)—Foscolo refers to the second edition, which appeared in 1816; and J. A. Galiffe’s Italy and its Inhabitants: An Account of a Tour in that Country in 1816 and 1817, 2 vols (London, 1820). ²⁶ Foscolo, ‘Classical Tours’, p. 257. On Forsyth’s popularity among contemporary travellers like Byron see K. Crook, ‘Truth and Sense on Italy: Byron’s Guidebook’, in L. M. Crisafulli (ed.), Imagining Italy: Literary Itineraries in British Romanticism (Bologna, 2002), pp. 155–64.


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that, allowing for the Italian temperament and manners, Italian ladies were in fact somewhat more virtuous than their English counterparts.²⁷ Another weakness of Italian society Foscolo was willing to grant Forsyth was the existence of the cavalier servente or cicisbeo—evidence, both agreed, of the ‘political degradation’ of Italy, of the pernicious influence of religion over society and of the harmful effects of ill-considered legislation.²⁸ At the same time, Foscolo felt that Forsyth’s opinion of Italian women of the lower classes was unduly harsh. He offered an explanation for the inability by the Grand Tourists to understand Italians of the ‘lower ranks’, namely that the lack of direct contact and the cultural and social distance involved were bound to make their observations inaccurate: Those who do not travel with pretensions to move in high life, could not but bear testimony to how strangely the fair sex in that part of the world has been calumniated. It would be absurd to deny that there were, or that there are at present, many frail women in Italy; but the proportion is much smaller than the influence of the climate might have warranted one to expect. ‘The generality of females—adds a Swiss traveller—are perhaps more respectable in Italy than elsewhere.’²⁹

Once more Foscolo uses a traveller to deny the prejudices of other foreign Grand Tourists. In order to prove the injustice of foreign observations, he felt obliged to resort to the authority of another, and thus he calls upon the Swiss Galiffe to refute the British Forsyth. On the subject of the character of the Italians, his role thus remained passive, confined to qualifying, or correcting the foreigners’ views, rather than proposing in a creative, independent way an original description of Italian society. Whatever Foscolo had to say about the Italian national character ended up being underwritten by the external authority of a northern European traveller. Yet, while accepting the tourists as a reliable source of information about the Italian national character, Foscolo was less keen to allow them to discuss Italian history and culture. Indeed, while in exile he devoted much time and effort to a revaluation of Italian past and present culture for the benefit of the British public. To give one example, his Essay on the Present Literature in Italy, published by John Cam Hobhouse in 1818 as a companion volume to Byron’s fourth canto of Childe Harold, represented a significant contribution to the understanding of contemporary Italian literature in England.³⁰ The history of the essay, written by Foscolo but published under Hobhouse’s name, and the furore it provoked in Italy on account of his dismissal of the Classic—Romantic ²⁷ Foscolo, ‘Classical Tours’, p. 262. He quotes Forsyth, Remarks, p. 377. ²⁸ Foscolo, ‘The Women of Italy’, in Foscolo, EN, 12, pp. 418–69. It was published in October 1826 in the London Magazine. ²⁹ Foscolo, ‘Classical Tours’, p. 261. ³⁰ N. Havely, ‘ ‘‘This Infernal Essay’’: English Contexts for Foscolo’s Essay on the Present Literature of Italy’, in Crisafulli (ed.), Imagining Italy, pp. 233–50.

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debate as an idle dispute, is well known.³¹ What matters here is to stress the association that Foscolo’s ideas had with Byron’s successful reinvention of Italy and the latter’s support for Italian patriotism in Childe Harold. In the essay, contemporary Italian culture was described through a gallery of biographies as alive and thriving, and presented as proof of the regeneration undergone by Italy since the previous century. Foscolo was thus not only reacting to the distorted representations of Italy by English travellers in the English press, but also, more importantly, disseminating his own interpretation of contemporary Italian culture in association with one of the most successful representations of contemporary Italy, a representation wholly sympathetic, moreover, to the concerns of early Italian patriots.

Lady Morgan and the Regeneration of Contemporary Italy The most complex example of the dialogue established between travellers and travelled in the context of the Romantic Grand Tour is exemplified by the exchange of ideas which both led to the creation of Lady Morgan’s travel literature and produced the responses to it. It is to Lady Morgan’s Italy and her Life of Salvator Rosa that the following pages will be devoted. Written as a result of her visit to the peninsula between 1819 and 1820, Italy immediately became an international bestseller, running to seven editions and becoming one of the most popular descriptions of Italy, in competition with the nine editions of Eustace’s Classical Tour.³² An idol in European liberal circles, Lady Morgan achieved a fame as a blue stocking second only to Mme de Staël, and was welcomed by the beau monde of every Italian city as a celebrity. In fact, like most such works, Italy owed much to previous travel guides, not least to Eustace’s handbook.³³ However, what made Italy unique was the central place it granted to contemporary history, politics, and culture. Her acquaintance with the Romantic intelligentsia met during her visits to Turin and Milan, and her sympathy for the Italian national cause, which she likened to that of Ireland, is revealed by the opinions relayed in Italy. In her book she recounted in some detail her encounters with the brightest minds of Piedmont and Lombardy, claiming that ‘Paris itself could scarcely furnish pleasanter or more intellectual society’, and pointing to the ‘ardent but rational patriotism’ of the Conciliatori.³⁴ ³¹ See E. R. Vincent’s classic reconstruction in his Byron, Hobhouse and Foscolo (Cambridge, 1949); see also Terzoli, ‘Lettere dall’Inghilterra: Foscolo e il gruppo del ‘‘Conciliatore’’ ’, in G. Barbarisi and A. Cadioli (eds), Idee e figure del ‘Conciliatore’ (Milan, 2004), pp. 363–86. ³² Lady Morgan, Italy, 2 vols (London, 1821). On Italy see A. O’Brien, ‘Crossing Boundaries: Lady Morgan’s Italy’, Irish Journal for Feminist Studies, 5 (2003), 20–33. D. Abbate Badin, Lady Morgan’s Italy: Anglo-Irish Sensibilities and Italian Realities in Post-Restoration Italy (Bethesda, 2007). ³³ Significantly, Lady Morgan outspokenly criticized this latter as a source of reliable information. J. H. Whitfield, ‘Mr Eustace and Lady Morgan’, pp. 166–89. Lady Morgan attacks Eustace in Italy, i, p. 56. ³⁴ Lady Morgan, Italy, i, p. 122.


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More importantly, her views on the recent political upheavals and the conditions of the Kingdom of Italy reveal the influence of Romantic intellectuals. Unlike most contemporary travellers, in Italy she reported and endorsed many of the opinions of her Italian acquaintances. In Piedmont, it was through reading Vittorio Alfieri that she learned about the despotism of the Savoy monarchy.³⁵ Detecting the dissatisfaction of liberal circles with the current governments, Lady Morgan referred to the ideas of Ferdinando Dal Pozzo—who was to become a good friend in exile—as evidence of the need for administrative reform in the Kingdom of Sardinia, and to the advantages introduced by the Napoleonic legal and institutional system, partially abolished by the restored monarchy.³⁶ In Turin and Milan, her encounter with the liberal elites convinced Lady Morgan that they belonged to the same cosmopolitan intellectual world she could find in Paris or London. In Turin she observed that ‘the men [. . .] are perfectly European.’³⁷ In Lombardy she praised Count Confalonieri’s efforts to introduce popular education as an example of the upper classes’ commitment to the betterment of the population, which in her view broke with the traditional patterns of social relations dominated by oppression in favour of cooperation and philanthropy. Lady Morgan could thus come to the conclusion that northern Italy was not part of an undefined ‘south’ outside the boundaries of Europe, but was an integral part of it. Through the pages of the Conciliatore and the Histoire des Républiques Italiennes, whose authors she met in Milan, she learnt that Italy had recently undergone a process of political, moral, and social regeneration, a conviction she shared with them. It was under the inspiration of Sismondi that she opened her work with a historical sketch praising the glorious experience of the medieval republics, and pointing to the beneficial effects of the French Revolution in Italy.³⁸ The dispute between Classics and Romantics, sketched in a section devoted to the state of Italian culture and written by her husband, Sir Charles Morgan, presented the opinion that ‘Romantic’ and ‘political reformer’ were coterminous.³⁹ Moving from the north to the south clearly meant for Lady Morgan to leave Europe for the East, as she described the great majority of the population as ‘Arab in their habits and principles; Greek in their subtlety and talents’, in short a ‘semi-civilized people’ whose religiosity, excited by a vivid imagination, was made up of superstitious beliefs dating back well before Catholicism. She confirmed the most conventional travellers’ prejudices regarding the Neapolitan upper and lower classes, which sharply contrasted with her views on the northern ³⁵ Ibid., i, p. 49. ³⁶ Ibid., i, p. 53, 62–3. She referred to Dal Pozzo’s Opuscoli di un Avvocato Milanese, originario Piemontese, sovra alcune questioni politico-legali (Milan, 1819). ³⁷ Lady Morgan, Italy, i, p. 58. ³⁸ Ibid., i, pp. 16 and ff. ³⁹ Charles Morgan extensively quoted Ermes Visconti’s ‘Idee elementari sulla poesia romantica’ (Il Conciliatore, i, pp. 391–2), in Lady Morgan, Italy, ii, pp. 138–9.

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Italians.⁴⁰ Although she sometimes warned against the travellers’ habit of comparing indiscriminately their manners with those of other societies without allowing for historical and political differences, she ended up confirming the prejudices she had set out to challenge. This was a narrative device abundantly employed by contemporary Grand Tourists, a strategy defined by Kate Fleming as a ‘façade of cultural relativism’, which enabled them ‘simultaneously to appear open-minded and to retain, indeed corroborate long-held assumptions’.⁴¹ Lady Morgan’s comments on the Neapolitans exemplify this attitude. Maintaining that the Neapolitans’ alleged falsity and dishonesty had always been exaggerated, she disputed their ‘inherent viciousness’, and claimed that under a proper government they would be ‘fine material [. . .] for a noble national character’. Yet at the same time she also confirmed that under the current political conditions they tended to display barbarous tendencies and were prone to the most atrocious crimes. With regard to the lazzaroni, whom she described as in a state close to that of nature and in idleness, she reported the view that they were in fact inclined to hard work. Nonetheless she concluded that ‘their willingness to work, however, does not indispose them towards the pleasures of indolence, which their climate naturally tends to render an enjoyment’.⁴² To sum up, while many early nineteenth-century travellers would still locate the whole of Italy in an undefined south, Lady Morgan’s bestseller divided Italy between a civilized north and a backward ‘south’. Proposing a positive image of northern Italy, her book also reflected the views of the Italian Romantic elites, and advanced a brand of liberalism which tallied with that of the Italian Romantics and with their political aspirations. The reception of Italy among Italians was mixed, provoking both praise, private and public, and criticism.⁴³ Surprising though it might sound, it was Pecchio, a member of the Conciliatore circle in exile and a friend of the Morgans, who unleashed the most savage attack, in an anonymous pamphlet published in 1824, Le Morganiche.⁴⁴ To judge by Pecchio’s tirade, Lady Morgan’s pages appear to tread on fiercely contested territory, namely the competing political views that the northern Italian Romantics held with regard to the Napoleonic period and the role of the aristocracy in Italian politics. Lady Morgan’s dissemination of a ⁴⁰ Lady Morgan, Italy, ii, pp. 386–91, 393. ⁴¹ K. E. Fleming, The Muslim Bonaparte: Diplomacy and Orientalism in Ali Pacha’s Greece (Princeton, 1999), pp. 131–4. ⁴² Lady Morgan, Italy, ii, p. 393n. ⁴³ G. Canonici Fachini, Propetto biografico delle donne italiane rinomate in letteratura dal secolo decimoquarto fino a’ nostri giorni, con una risposta a Lady Morgan risguardante alcune accuse da lei date alle donne italiane nella sua opera l’Italie (Venice, 1824); N. Wiseman, Remarks on Lady Morgan’s Statements Regarding St. Peter’s Chair Preserved in the Vatican Basilic (Rome, 1833). ⁴⁴ The full title is Le Morganiche: ossia lettere scritte da un italiano a Miledi Morgan, sopra varii articoli relativi a Milano ed al Regno d’Italia, che si trovano nel primo tomo della sua Italia (Edinburgh, 1824). A more detailed analysis of this anonymous pamphlet is in M. Isabella, ‘Una polemica sconosciuta di Giuseppe Pecchio: ‘‘Le Morganiche’’ ’, Il Risorgimento, 46 (1994), 47–88.


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particular interpretation of the Napoleonic era in Italy acted as a magnifying glass for an especially controversial topic among Italian liberals. Since the conflicting views of the Romantic elite now in exile were no longer confined to the circle of the former revolutionaries, but had been given broad currency by her bestseller, Pecchio obviously felt that a riposte was required. The most important message to emerge from the pamphlet was Pecchio’s belief that the Napoleonic era had been fundamental in shaping Italian national identity, although that political experience could not and should not be repeated. Pecchio admitted that, compared with its precursors, Lady Morgan’s book was noteworthy for its attempt to discuss contemporary issues, rather than confining itself to the contemplation of ruins, climate, and art. But he condemned Lady Morgan’s interpretation of the last seventy years of Lombard history, ranging from the reign of Maria Theresa to the fall of the Napoleonic Kingdom.⁴⁵ The Irish traveller was certainly outspoken in her criticisms of the Austrian government in Italy both before the Napoleonic era and after 1814. Although acknowledging that, contrary to Eustace’s claims in Classical Tour, Napoleon had done all he could to improve ‘arts, science and manufactures’, she lamented the despotic nature of his government in a way that may also reflect the attitudes of the aristocrats she had met in Lombardy and Piedmont.⁴⁶ In order to refute Lady Morgan’s account, Pecchio offered an alternative interpretation of Lombard history, one which was at least partly in line with the views of the Lombard Enlightenment, and in particular with the ideas of Pietro Verri. Pecchio, anticipating what was to become a key argument of his Storia dell’economia pubblica, upheld the myth of the harmonious collaboration between the philosophers and the government, which turned the age of Maria Theresa into a period of intense administrative and economic reform, such as the introduction of the famous land register, the reform of the University of Pavia and the appointment of notable reformers to the chairs of the Scuola Palatina in Milan.⁴⁷ It was, however, to the Napoleonic period that Pecchio devoted most of his attention in the pages of the Morganiche, proposing that in the aftermath of the revolutionary period, and given Italy’s historical and social conditions, only a strong leadership could have gradually schooled Italians in the ways of freedom and turned them into citizens. At the same time, he maintained that the institutions of the kingdom had the capacity to, and were in the process of, transforming Italy into a political community.⁴⁸ A very harsh anti-aristocratic animus informs the pages of Pecchio’s pamphlet, which points to the recurring attempts made by Lombard aristocrats to oppose any reform and to protect their local autonomies from national programmes. Referring to the eighteenth century, Pecchio agreed with Verri that the Decurioni, the patricians ⁴⁵ Le Morganiche, pp. 4–5. ⁴⁷ Le Morganiche, p. 19.

⁴⁶ Lady Morgan, Italy, i, pp. 133, 135, 148–9. ⁴⁸ Ibid., p. 36–7.

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governing the city of Milan, had never done anything for the public good.⁴⁹ Moving on to recent events culminating in the collapse of the Napoleonic Kingdom, through his critique of Italy Pecchio targeted his colleagues or partners in the Conciliatore, and the aristocratic element of the liberal party in Italy, which he saw as the direct heirs of ancien régime elites resisting the Habsburgs’ reforms.⁵⁰ Likewise for Francesco Salfi, when reviewing Italy in the Revue encyclopédique, the most sensitive issue in relation to Lady Morgan’s book was not her account of national character but her interpretations of Italy’s modern history and culture. Like Pecchio when appraising the Italian economic school and Foscolo when defending eighteenth-century antiquarians, Salfi had in fact developed his own interpretation of modern Italian culture, which he underpinned with his concept of génie. This idea is central to his attempt at reassessing Italian culture in the modern age.⁵¹ It was precisely with this goal in mind that Salfi had written most of his articles on Italian literature in the Revue encyclopédique, and his continuation of Ginguené’s Histoire de la littérature d’Italie. With this term Salfi referred to the unique and special set of virtues that made Italian culture different from others in regard to its talents, creativity, and achievements. For him the key features of Italian genius were its ‘great fertility’, ‘prodigious verve’, and ‘peculiar flexibility of spirit’. Like the notion of primacy advanced by Salfi’s contemporaries, that of genius did not imply a cultural chauvinism. In the mould of Marc-Antoine Jullien and the contributors to the Revue encyclopédique, Salfi in fact embraced an intensely cosmopolitan ideal of civilization, based on the need for a circulation of ideas among nations. His purpose was not to demonstrate the superiority of Italian culture, but its full participation in European intellectual progress, hence his definition of Italy as ‘a province of the European republic of letters’. The distinction between ‘civilization’ and génie employed by Salfi enabled him to provide an original reading of Italy’s history and to champion it even in moments of political decadence. While agreeing with Lady Morgan that Italy had undoubtedly gone through periods of political and moral degeneration, he pointed also to the unique role of Italian intellectuals in leading the cultural renewal of Europe under political despotism, as had been the case between the sixteenth and seventeenth century with its unique intellectual production in the fields of politics, philosophy, and the sciences. This meant that Italy might well have been less civilized than other parts of Europe, but that its genius ⁴⁹ On Verri’s Pensieri, see C. Capra, ‘Alle origini del moderatismo e del giacobinismo in Lombardia: Pietro Verri e Pietro Custodi’, Studi Storici, 30 (1989), 873–90. Compare P. Verri, ‘Pensieri sullo stato politico del Milanese’, in Scritti Vari di Pietro Verri ordinati da Giulio Carcano, 2 vols (Florence, 1854), ii, pp. 3–5, with Pecchio, Le Morganiche, pp. 15–21. Pecchio directly refers to Verri at p. 15. ⁵⁰ Le Morganiche, pp. 55–6. ⁵¹ Salfi, ‘L’Italie, par Lady Morgan, ouvrage traduit de l’anglais’, Revue encyclopédique, 12 (1821), 326–42. See also F. Salfi, ‘Du génie des Italiens et de l’état actuel de leur littérature’, Revue encyclopédique, 1 (1819), 515–24; (1819), 118–33; 3 (1819) 543–50; 4 (1819), 156–74.


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had provided, at several decisive moments in its history, and still did provide a key contribution to the unfolding of European progress.⁵² Given the fact that for Salfi modern civilization, as he made clear in his L’Italie au dix-neuvième siècle (1821), hinged upon the existence of political freedom, independence, and constitutional guarantees, Italy might not have achieved all these things, but under the influence of European public opinion it was nonetheless ready for them.⁵³ Unlike Pecchio, however, Salfi invoked Lady Morgan in support of this programme of re-evaluation of Italian identity. Indeed he was convinced that Lady Morgan’s bestseller represented a remarkable exception to the bulk of travel literature, and thus was deserving of special praise. Salfi shared with the other Italian intellectuals a dissatisfaction with tourists’ attitudes towards Italy, and he even went so far as to compare the insults inflicted by the Grand Tourists on Italy to the humiliations resulting from military defeats and foreign invasions. Lady Morgan, however, rather than waxing lyrical about antiquities, monuments, or natural beauties as most travellers had done, had been right to observe that, to one side of the swarms of beggars and antiquarians, there existed in Italy many ‘philosophers [. . .] writers [. . .] patriots’. Salfi was not reluctant to point out the weaknesses of Lady Morgan’s observations.⁵⁴ However, in his view, these were only misdemeanours, minor faults in a predominantly successful enterprise. Through a judicious selection of passages from Lady Morgan, Salfi was thus able to reinforce his own interpretation of the modern history of the peninsula and to bolster his own theory regarding the ‘genius’ of Italians. Given her liberal credentials, Lady Morgan represented a credible external source of information, an impartial observer whose opinion would give additional weight to his own ideas. Hence Salfi’s use of her book to make the case for Italy’s participation in the progressive movement of civilization. That for Salfi travel literature represented an authoritative source of insights regarding Italy, and that travellers were de facto telling Italians how they should judge their country, is confirmed once again by the rhetorical use he made of Grand Tourists’ remarks, according to a pattern already remarked upon in relation to Foscolo’s reviews. Like Foscolo, Salfi accounted for the tourists’ inability to gain a fair understanding of the peninsula in terms of difficulties ⁵² On Salfi’s reinterpretation of Italy’s history see also G. Goggi, ‘Francesco Saverio Salfi e la continuazione dell’Histoire littéraire d’Italie del Ginguené’, in Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Classe di Lettere e Filosofia, 2 (1972), 641–702. More generally, on Salfi’s contribution to the Revue see the essays included in P. A. De Lisio (ed.), Francesco Saverio Salfi, un calabrese per l’Europa (Naples, 1981). ⁵³ F. S. Salfi, L’Italia nel secolo diciannovesimo o della necessità di accordare in Italia il potere con la libertà [Paris, 1821] (Cosenza, 1990), pp. 55–7. ⁵⁴ In addition, although she had rightly condemned the superstition and social degradation resulting from Papal rule, Salfi regretted that Lady Morgan had forgot to mention, among those who had fought against the Catholic Church, the Waldensians, the Protestant minority living according to ‘the purity of evangelical doctrine’ in the Piedmontese Alps. Salfi, ‘L’Italie’, pp. 337, 339.

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of communication between persons of a different nationality and social class, a communication further complicated by the gulf between the ‘civilized classes’ and the populace. However, Salfi did not challenge Lady Morgan’s opinions of the Neapolitan lazzaroni. Indeed, he directly reproduced her observations regarding their peculiar custom of improvising and enacting the discourses of grotesquely costumed academics, surrounded by their attentive and wildly enthusiastic peers. Like Lady Morgan, he went so far as to praise their poetic talent, while at the same time admitting that they represented ‘the least civilized people in Italy’.⁵⁵ In his L’Italie au dix-neuvième siècle, much as Foscolo had done, Salfi made his case by playing one traveller off against another. He argued that Italy’s intellectual progress from the middle of the eighteenth century onwards proved that Lalande’s Italy had by then disappeared. Yet in order to challenge the view, common among foreign travellers, that Calabria was no more than ‘a vast cave of brigands’, he called as witness a German traveller who denied the truth of this statement.⁵⁶ Salfi returned to the topic of bandits and southern Italian history in a review of another of Lady Morgan’s bestsellers, the romanticized biography of the seventeenth-century painter and poet Salvator Rosa.⁵⁷ Once more, Lady Morgan’s Life and Times of Salvator Rosa provided him not only with an opportunity to defend his own interpretation of Naples’s history and civilization, but also to condemn the mixture of history and fiction that had made Foscolo so indignant. Between the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth century Salvator Rosa’s tormented, picturesque landscapes, inhabited by bandits and beggars became, in Roderick Cavaliero’s words, ‘one of the paradigm images of Italy’.⁵⁸ Lady Morgan turned this painter of romantic, dramatic images and composer of satires into a rebel and an Italian patriot ante litteram, setting his life in a historical fresco of seventeenth-century Italian society and politics, while at the same time hinting at parallels with the present day. Along with Salvator Rosa, Lady Morgan likewise celebrated the bandits of southern Italy, whom she portrayed as political rebels, describing them as ‘brave, bold Condottieri’, rather than ‘vulgar cut-throats’. In Lady Morgan’s fanciful historical fantasies, these groups included Neapolitan aristocrats fighting against despotism, whom she compared to the contemporary Italian exiled carbonari.⁵⁹ Describing Salvator Rosa as a great genius and a ‘true son of liberty’, Lady Morgan placed his artistic qualities and his rebellious attitude to tyranny and superstition against the background of a peninsula oppressed by Spanish despotism and plagued with moral and intellectual decadence. For Lady Morgan the idle literary disputes of the period and the poetry of Cavalier Marino, with its excessive use of ornate, ⁵⁵ Ibid., p. 342. ⁵⁶ Salfi, L’Italia nel secolo diciannovesimo, pp. 41, 85. ⁵⁷ Lady Morgan, The Life and Times of Salvator Rosa, 2 vols, (London, 1824). ⁵⁸ R. Cavaliero, Italia Romantica: English Romantics and Italian Freedom (London-New York, 2005), p. 56. ⁵⁹ Lady Morgan, The Life and Times, i, pp. 111–15.


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convoluted metaphors, epitomized the mediocrity of the literary production of that age in Italy, against which Rosa’s poetical oeuvre stood out as an exception.⁶⁰ Like Foscolo in his articles on the Grand Tour, Salfi and Carlo Botta based their objections to Lady Morgan’s biography on the persistent confusion between historical truth and invention, arising from the fact that that her work, originally conceived as history, ended up as a novel. Hence the anachronisms in Lady Morgan’s narrative: describing Rosa’s involvement in Tommaso Campanella’s conspiracy against Spanish rule, she forgot that these events took place at least fifteen years before his birth.⁶¹ Botta was a former Jacobin who remained attached to the principles of the Enlightenment and literary classicism until the end of his life. His outrage at Lady Morgan’s fiction was fuelled by his disdain for Romanticism, of which Salvator Rosa represented a particularly degenerate form. Denouncing all those who, like Lady Morgan, believed that good prose and poetry should be full of ‘weeping, grief, blood, tombs, storms, deserts, volcanoes, lava, brigands and assassins, and other similar pleasant imaginings’, Botta dismissed the Life of Salvator Rosa as a romantic fantasy and objected to her condemnation of the Crusca, reminding Lady Morgan that the Academy of the Crusca, in compiling its Italian dictionary, had accomplished the same noble task as had Johnson in England.⁶² For Salfi the crucial problem with Salvator Rosa was that it provided an image of the seventeenth century at odds with his own interpretation, which was central to his theory of Italian genius. While he condemned ‘Marinismo’ as a degenerate form of Romantic poetry, Salfi also believed that the seventeenth century had been the era of great philosophers and scientists like Cardano, Campanella, Telesio, Sarpi and Galileo, whose philosophical revolution would affect the whole of Europe’s scientific development.⁶³ Moreover, Lady Morgan’s transformation of seventeenth-century aristocrats who rebelled against the monarchy into liberals ante litteram was another Romantic travesty. Endorsing the anti-feudal views of Neapolitan philosophers and historians like Giannone and Genovesi, who saw in the dismantling of the feudal system a precondition for the reform of the kingdom and the strengthening of the monarchy, Salfi remarked that these landlords had ‘often betrayed their sovereigns, and always oppressed their vassals’.⁶⁴ Salfi’s ⁶⁰ Ibid., ii, pp. 228–32. ⁶¹ Salfi, ‘Mémoires sur la vie et le siècle de Salvator Rosa, par Lady Morgan’, in Revue encyclopédique, 22 (1824), 109–21; C. Botta, ‘Ragionamento sulle Memorie di Lady Morgan risguardanti alla vita ed al secolo di Salvator Rosa’ [1825], in Lettere di Carlo Botta ( Turin, 1841), pp. 177–92. ⁶² Botta, ‘Ragionamento’, pp. 180, 188. ⁶³ Salfi, ‘Mémoires . . .’, pp. 113–14. ⁶⁴ Ibid., pp. 112. For an introduction to this aspect of Neapolitan enlightenment see Venturi, ‘The Enlightenment in Southern Italy’, in idem, Italy and the Enlightenment: Studies in a Cosmopolitan Century (London, 1972), pp. 198–224. Like Salfi, Botta found Lady Morgan’s interpretation of the Neapolitan feudal lords as fighters for freedom ridiculous (Botta, ‘Ragionamento’, pp. 181).

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reactions to Lady Morgan thus confirm that while her partial endorsement of contemporary Italian reformulations of their own circumstances was felt to merit some praise in the periodical press, her concession to the Romantic tendency to ‘invent’ Italy continued to be perceived as a very serious and damaging threat to the reputation of Italy in Europe.

I N F LU E N C I N G E N G L I S H PE RC E P T I O N S O F T H E I TA L I A N QU E S T I O N The importance of Foscolo’s and Salfi’s reactions to the Grand Tour does not lie solely in the evidence they provide about the role of travel literature in the shaping of Italian identity. In fact, they further demonstrate the exiles’ determination to engage directly with northern European public opinion, and to influence it. For Foscolo’s and Salfi’s articles also presented their own original views to the English and French public about conditions in Italy and the nature and causes of the national question. While Salfi remained the sole representative of the Italian diaspora in France to debate Italian culture on a regular basis, in the authoritative Revue encyclopédique, the exiles based in England published extensively in the British press between 1815 and the mid-1830s. For many of them, journalism became the primary means of survival, as even those who enjoyed the privilege of aristocratic connections, being without a regular income, ended up writing as reviewers and essayists to make a living. The exiles were fully aware of the opportunities provided by the unprecedented development of journalism which took place in France and Britain in the first decades of the nineteenth century, and by the advantages offered by the freedom of the press and the existence of a public sphere. Admittedly, some of them viewed the excessive commercialization of intellectual work as a threat both to the quality of writing and to the independence of intellectuals from the excessive influence of public opinion or from the lure of financial gain. Foscolo, for instance, believed that ‘the most popular authors adopt their principles and their manner as the interests of the moment suggest’.⁶⁵ However, the advantages offered by the existence of such a market were obvious to one and all. Pecchio in his Dissertazione (1832) went so far as to celebrate the opportunities enjoyed by intellectuals in commercial societies to act as key intermediaries between authority and society. For Pecchio, political and economic freedom offered writers and journalists an unprecedented role in influencing public opinion, and their influence, he argued, was further ⁶⁵ Quotation from Foscolo, ‘Frederick the Second and Pietro delle Vigne’ [1822], EN, 10, pp. 455–62, p. 403. See, for instance, De Meester’s republican concern about the negative impact of commercial gain on the independence of intellectuals and the quality of their production: ‘Brouillon de l’état actuel de la France par l’influence de l’or’ (Carte de Meester, c. 2 b (4) 2, Fondo Esuli, MRM).


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enhanced by the fact that in England governments could no longer ignore the press if they wanted to survive.⁶⁶ In the following pages I discuss how the exiles represented conditions in the Italian peninsula, and what arguments they employed to make the Risorgimento appealing to the English public. Their communication campaign in the English press was primarily designed to discredit the two main enemies of their national projects, the Habsburg Empire and the Catholic Church. That the overt hostility to the papacy displayed in the exiles’ patriotic discourse should have proved attractive is hardly surprising, given the contempt of English public opinion for Catholicism. Since Britishness was closely identified with Protestant constitutionalism, and since papal despotism was viewed by many—including the still vocal opponents of Catholic Emancipation—as the arch-enemy of English liberties, Foscolo’s or Rossetti’s arguments seemed merely to confirm English prejudices about the incompatibility between papal authority and freedom, and to make the Risorgimento resemble a Protestant revolution. Likewise, constant reference to Habsburg despotism confirmed English notions of the superiority of their polity. In the exiles’ rhetoric, Austria and its Italian allies were consistently described as barbaric, a connotation rhetorically heightened by frequent comparisons with the Ottoman Empire. In reviewing Santarosa’s work on the 1821 revolution in Piedmont along with Pecchio’s Letter to Henry Brougham for the Edinburgh Review Antonio Panizzi, referring to his country of origin, the Duchy of Modena, wrote that ‘we may safely assert, that nothing out of Turkey can surpass the despotism exercised by the reigning Duke’.⁶⁷ Such damning comparison was justified through the use of a number of tropes which later came to be identified with Austria’s ‘Black Legend’, a key element of the patriots’ narration of the Risorgimento. Indeed, the exiles’ writings represent some of the earliest formulations of such a legend. First, the exiles questioned the existence of the rule of law under Austrian government, and represented Austrian justice as based not on law but on the emperor’s whims, and on judicial procedures which did not recognize the right to a defence counsel for those who were prosecuted, and which were hopelessly slow. Some of the trials of the Carbonari in Lombardy lasted for two whole years.⁶⁸ Yet no government of the Italian states passed muster; indeed Panizzi stressed the unfairness of the current Piedmontese administrative and political system.⁶⁹ Secondly, the exiles lamented the lack of a free press, and governmental hostility to the mildest attempts by civil society to effect improvements in Austrian Italy. The closing down of the Conciliatore, the trial of the Carbonari, and the death ⁶⁶ G. Pecchio, Della Produzione Letteraria, ed. F. Cossutta (Pordenone, 1985), p. 157. ⁶⁷ Panizzi, ‘Italy’, Edinburgh Review, 40 (1824), 207–25, at 209. Similar language in Pecchio, ‘Qu’est que c’est l’Austrie?’ [1824], SP, pp. 526, 541. ⁶⁸ Pecchio, A Letter to Henry Brougham, Esq. M.P. (1824) in SP, p. 529. ⁶⁹ Panizzi, ‘Italy’, p. 208.

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sentences, commuted at the last minute to life imprisonment, imposed upon moderate liberals like Confalonieri, ‘a name reverenced by all Englishmen who have visited Italy’, and writers like Pellico, and the death in prison of the professor of political economy Adeodato Ressi, provided sufficient proof of the cruelty of the regime.⁷⁰ In addition, the exiles described Lombardy and Venetia as subject to a financial and economic exploitation which turned these regions into little more than impoverished colonies. According to Pecchio’s comparative analysis of the economic and fiscal conditions of northern Italy first under Napoleon and then under Austria, the latter government’s policies came out as decidedly more punitive than those of its predecessor. Pecchio argued that while the continental blockade of the Napoleonic era had encouraged some local industries, Austrian rule exclusively favoured the manufactures of Bohemia and Moravia, while condemning local enterprises to an inexorable decline. While virtually no goods were imported from Lombardy to Austria, the kingdom lost its financial resources through high taxation.⁷¹ In the words of Panizzi, ‘The great resources drained from Lombardy are lavished in Vienna.’ Finally, the exiles resented the fact that administration of these regions was dominated by foreign bureaucrats.⁷² The most systematic and comprehensive political attack aimed at Austria by the Edinburgh Review was Pecchio’s historical account of the Habsburg Empire published in 1824. For Pecchio, Austria was nothing less than ‘A power in Europe which labours systematically to roll back the tide of civilization.’⁷³ In his view, Austria was ‘poor in money and heroism—but she is rich in men’. In this respect, it represented the moral negation of the values of Romantic heroism praised by the exiles and closely associated with the notion of the nation fighting for freedom. Pecchio alleged that the imperial troops were made up of ‘automata that allow themselves to be slaughtered for fivepence a day’.⁷⁴ These accounts reinforced the image of a nation subject to a foreign and oppressive domination, one alien both to the expectations of its people and to the principles of western civilization. The exiles’ ‘communication campaign’ also entailed attacking the Catholic Church, which they judged to be the foremost historical enemy of Italian patriotism. Foscolo’s articles on Dante and other Italian literary figures in the ⁷⁰ As discussed in all the above-mentioned articles. Quotation from Panizzi, ‘Italy’, p. 221; See also Pecchio, A Letter, pp. 519. ⁷¹ Pecchio, A Letter, quoted in Panizzi, ‘Italy’, pp. 210–11. ⁷² Panizzi, ‘Italy’, p. 224. This description of Austrian rule in Italy had a lasting influence on Italian historiography. For a reassessment of the black legend see D. Laven, ‘Law and Order in Habsburg Venetia 1814–1835’, Historical Journal, 39 (1996), 383–403; idem, Venice and Venetia under the Habsburgs, 1815–1835 (Oxford, 2002). For the economic dimension of the black legend see R. Pichler, ‘Economic Policy and development in Austrian Lombardy, 1815–1859’, Modern Italy, 6 (2001), 35–58. ⁷³ Pecchio, ‘Qu’est que c’est l’Austrie?’ ⁷⁴ Ibid., pp. 530–1.


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British press were not only exercises in literary criticism but also historical essays pointedly discussing the influence of the Church on Italy’s politics and culture. Foscolo was also convinced that the Church had not always been the enemy of Italy’s freedom. Against Machiavelli and Robertson, Foscolo claimed that in the Middle Ages under Gregory VII and for two centuries afterwards the Church had actually encouraged freedom in Italy, as it had released the Italian cities from their oath to the emperor, setting in motion the political processes which led to the creation of republics and democracy in Italy. For Foscolo, however, the end of that period, which coincided with Dante’s life, marked a permanent rift between the national cause and papal authority in Italy.⁷⁵ In the following centuries the Church fell prey to fanaticism, of which first the Crusades and then the activities of the Holy Inquisition represented particularly striking examples.⁷⁶ Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, the neglect suffered by, and the hostility directed at, Dante’s eminently civic and patriotic poetry, whose verses were ‘more suited to fostering a public spirit in Italy’, and the corresponding fame of Petrarch was, in Foscolo’s opinion, due to the negative influence of the Jesuits over Italian culture.⁷⁷ In short, the power of the popes resulted in an authoritarian control over culture and politics, which determined the decline of Italy’s public and intellectual life.⁷⁸ Also in more recent years, the papacy had missed the opportunity to assume leadership of the national movement. In an article published in the Edinburgh Review in 1819, Foscolo went as far as to speculate on Pope Pius VI’s missed opportunity in 1799 to lead an Italian confederation against Napoleon, which would have enabled the whole of Italy to resist the invader with the papacy at the head of the national movement. In Foscolo’s view the Pope had regrettably chosen to sow discord among the Italian states, thus hastening foreign conquest.⁷⁹ Gabriele Rossetti’s eccentric interpretation of Dante’s Commedia furnished the English public with an interpretation of Italian literature whose political significance was even more transparent than that of Foscolo. In Comento Analitico to the Divina Commedia (1826–7) and, more directly, in his Anti-Papal Spirit of the Italian Classics (1832), Rossetti’s interpretation undoubtedly reflected his own political biography. It was not hard to recover in his description of Dante as a fighter for freedom and a political exile Rossetti’s own personal experiences. According to his allegorical explanation of the Commedia, Dante belonged to a group of free thinkers hostile to the Papal Curia who, at a time when explicit ⁷⁵ Foscolo, Art. II, ‘Observations Concerning the Question of the Originality of the Poem of Dante, by Cancellieri’ [1818], EN, 9, I, pp. 72–6. ⁷⁶ Foscolo, ‘Parallel between Dante and Petrarch’ [originally published in Essays on Petrarch, London, 1823], EN, 10, pp. 290–1. ⁷⁷ Quotation from ‘Parallel between Dante and Petrarch’, p. 289. On the Jesuits see ‘Dante’ [1818], p. 24. ⁷⁸ Foscolo, ‘Boccaccio’ [1826], in EN, 10, p. 387. ⁷⁹ Foscolo, ‘Life of Pius VI’ [1819], EN, 12, pp. 1–65. Quotation from p. 52.

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criticism was not possible, voiced their hostility to the Catholic Church through metaphor and allegory. In Rossetti’s interpretation, Dante’s Hell symbolized Italy under the despotic authority of the pope.⁸⁰ Although the wayward and the eccentric nature of the interpretation occasioned some literary controversy, it was by and large welcomed by British reviewers, who relished its anti-Catholic bias.⁸¹ In conclusion, what the exiles’ articles and a review of their works demonstrate is the support that leading journals like the Edinburgh Review gave to the Italian cause, and in very much the terms set by the exiles themselves. Indeed, according to Panizzi, Count Confalonieri and the Conciliatore journalists were not dangerous revolutionaries, but a group of Enlightened aristocrats whose background and political attitudes were not dissimilar to those of the Whig grandees or of the journalists of the Edinburgh Review. Panizzi described Confalonieri in reassuring terms as ‘friend to rational liberty, and a decided enemy to foreign domination’, and dismissed the Austrian fears of nefarious secret societies as exaggerated.⁸² The British liberal readership could thus readily identify with principles upheld by the exiles in their articles. The exiles’ principles, in fact, tallied with the notions of progress, freedom, and civilization which were at the heart of Whig patriotism and represented the core values of the Edinburgh Review. In turn the Edinburgh Review openly endorsed the idea that the principle of nationality justified the rights of the Italian, Greek, and Polish populations to self-determination.⁸³ Further evidence of the sympathy aroused by the Italian question can be gleaned from the reception of Silvio Pellico’s Le mie prigioni, republished in London by the Piedmontese immigrant Pietro Rolandi, whose London bookshop made Italian literary works available both to British readers and to Italian exiles from 1826 to 1863.⁸⁴ The great efficacy and immense popularity of Pellico’s tract stemmed from the convincing contrast between the brutal conduct of the Austrians and the religious sensibility of the author, whose piety, ⁸⁰ The full title being Sullo Spirito Antipapale che produsse la Riforma, e sulla segreta influenza ch’ esercitó nella letteratura europea (London, 1832). It was also published in English as Disquisitions on the Anti-papal Spirit, trans. Caroline Ward, 2 vols (London, 1834). See ‘Rossetti on the Anti-Papal Spirit of the Italian Classics’, Edinburgh Review, 55 (1832), 531–51. ⁸¹ E. R. Vincent, Rossetti in England (Oxford, 1936). See also P. Giannantonio, ‘Gabriele Rossetti Dantista’, in G. Oliva (ed.), I Rossetti tra Italia e Inghilterra (Rome, 1984), pp. 21–32. On British views of Rossetti’s interpretation see now P. R. Horne and J. R. Woodhouse, ‘Le recensioni dello spirito antipapale pubblicate in Inghilterra (1832–34)’, in A. Caprio, P. R. Horne and J. R. Woodhouse (eds), Gabriele Rossetti, Carteggi, (1832–36), 6 vols (Naples, 1984–2006), iii, pp. xxi–xxxii. ⁸² Panizzi, ‘Italy’, p. 208. ⁸³ See ‘Political Condition of the Italian States’, Edinburgh Review, 55 (1832), 362–97, at 364. ⁸⁴ S. Pellico, Le mie prigioni, memorie di Silvio Pellico (London 1833). On Rolandi see M. Nagari, Pietro Rolandi da Quarona Valsesia (1801–1863) (1959, Novara).


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modelled on the figure of Christ, appealed to Anglicans and nonconformists alike. His torments undoubtedly added an emotional overtone to Italy’s case for emancipation from Austrian rule. In reviewing the French and English translations, the Edinburgh Review described the treatment endured by the liberal patriots imprisoned in the Spielberg as ‘crimes against reason and humanity, which it would be treason towards our nature to forget’.⁸⁵ The reviewer offered not only his unreserved sympathy, but also his full identification with the suffering endured by Pellico and his fellow prisoners, and their political beliefs.⁸⁶ From these articles we can deduce what may have been the attitudes towards Italian patriotism of the readers of the Edinburgh Review, the educated liberal middle class. For the opinions of the politicians and journalists close to the exiles we have more direct evidence. Given the substantial identity of political views between the exiles and the leading Whig and radical grandees to whom they had privileged access—their endorsement of Whiggish language was noted above—it is hardly surprising that the British politicians and intellectuals most in sympathy with them endorsed such a formulation of the Risorgimento. After all, the liberal exiles’ demands for constitutional charters in the Italian states and their rejection of Mazzini’s republicanism were compatible with the Whigs’ support for gradual reform and local autonomy.⁸⁷ What is perhaps rather more surprising is the degree to which the ideological affinities fostered by personal contact could enable the exiles to exert some informal influence on British foreign policy towards Italy, once their friends and acquaintances were in power. The 1831 revolution may serve to illustrate how the exiles took advantage of such connections with the British government in order to promote the interests of the Italian liberal-conservative elites. When in 1831 and 1832 Lord Holland and Lord Palmerston, then respectively Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Foreign Secretary, took an interest in the Italian peninsula and in the reform of the Papal States, it was the Lombard exile Giuseppe Pecchio who played a fundamental role as intermediary between the British government and those revolutionaries who had been responsible for the 1831 uprising in the Legations. In March 1832 the British Minister proposed to the papal government a second Memorandum, whose content was based on suggestions made to Palmerston by Romagnoli as relayed by Pecchio. The Memorandum called for a general amnesty, the abolition of the Holy Inquisition, the secularization of the administration and the independence of justice, the establishment of lay Commercial and Provincial ⁸⁵ ‘Pellico’s narrative of his imprisonment’, Edinburgh Review, 57 (1833), 476–85, at 481. ⁸⁶ Ibid., 483. ⁸⁷ For examples of the influence of the exiles’ anti-Austrian rhetoric see H. Brougham, Political Philosophy, 2 vols (London, 1842–3), i, p. 679. Similar comments can be found in J. C. Hobhouse, Italy: Remarks made in Several Visits from the Year 1816 to 1854, 2 vols (London, 1859), i, pp. 9–13; iii, p. 258.

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Councils to administer communes and provinces, and the creation of a Central Council in Rome.⁸⁸ Pecchio complemented his political action with an effort to influence public opinion. Indeed, he provided the Edinburgh Review with the material for a long article on the situation in Italy, ‘Political condition of the Italian States’, which he suspected had been written either by Macaulay or by William Empson. In the article, published in July 1832 and written as a review of Sismondi’s works, the author advocated the reform proposals included in the Memorandum, as a basis for the regeneration of the Papal States.⁸⁹ Although this new diplomatic initiative was destined to fail in the face of opposition from Austria and the Holy See, it nonetheless represented a turning point in English foreign policy towards the Papal States, which had for centuries been marked by abstention from any official contact, let alone any direct involvement in the papacy’s internal affairs. With the exception of a short spell on the eve of the 1848 revolution, when both the British political elites and public opinion became well disposed to Pope Pius IX as a liberal pope, it became clear to Palmerston, Russell, and Gladstone that the papal administration was beyond reform.⁹⁰ Furthermore, the contacts between Pecchio and Panizzi and the government in 1831–2 inaugurated a long period of fruitful cooperation between moderate exiles and British governments, which lasted until the end of the Risorgimento. In the 1830s and 1840s Antonio Panizzi, who in 1837 became Curator of the British Library, took over from Pecchio, who had died in 1835, as the point of reference in English political circles for Italian matters, along with other exiled moderates like Carlo Pepoli or James Lacaita, whose lobbying of British governments was intended to promote the interests of the Italian moderates in Milan and Rome and to counter the agenda of the democrats.⁹¹

C O N C LU S I O N S The representations of Italy available to the British middle classes in the aftermath of the Restoration arose out of a complex dialogue between Italian and British elites, in which the exiles played an important role both as receivers and transmitters of opinions, historical interpretations, and literary comments. Indeed, as the exiles were themselves only too well aware, this dialogue was at least partly asymmetrical, because of the overwhelming influence of the northern ⁸⁸ On this diplomatic event see A. J. Reinerman, Austria and the Papacy in the Age of Metternich, 2 vols (Washington, 1979–89), ii, pp. 149–77. A detailed discussion of Pecchio’s involvement in the affair is in Isabella, ‘Italian Exiles and British Politics’, pp. 64–7. ⁸⁹ Pecchio to Panizzi, 24 August 1832, Add Man 36,714, BM. ⁹⁰ On British engagement with the Papal States see now S. Matsumoto-Best, Britain and the Papacy in the Age of Revolution, 1846–1851 (Rochester, NY, 2003). ⁹¹ On Panizzi see Isabella, ‘Italian Exiles and British Politics’.


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European perspective on Italy. They were in fact prepared to countenance some of the English assumptions and stereotypes, to endorse the perception of their condition as one of relative civil backwardness and to rely at times on the authority of Grand Tourists to vouch for the truth of their statements. In Silvana Patriarca’s words, the Italian patriots ‘intensely felt the burden of outsiders’ representations’.⁹² At the same time, Italian patriots were not just passively absorbing English narratives of Italy, but creatively reacting also to what they felt was unfair about the assumptions contained in periodicals or pamphlets. Indeed, it is important to remember that while addressing the backwardness of Italian society so universally regretted by the Grand Tourists, their conceptualization of the problems of Italy was indebted not only to travel literature, but also, to a marked degree, to the ideas of the Enlightenment. As I have tried to show, their cultural and historical identity hinged upon an interpretation of their autonomous, local intellectual tradition, which in the case of Salfi and Pecchio entailed a re-elaboration of Lombard and Neapolitan Enlightenment themes, and was accompanied with a defence of the Napoleonic experience. The ideas of the cultural uniqueness of Italy emerging from their responses to the Grand Tour were always designed to serve the ideological goal of underpinning their political programmes. Marta Petrusewicz has recently argued that after 1848 exile provided the southern Italian patriots with notions of their supposed cultural and civil inferiority, which replaced earlier native Enlightenment discourses of reform and development. In short, by facilitating the transfer of northern European (and Piedmontese) views of backwardness and barbarity, exile provided a powerful incentive to the creation of the Southern Question.⁹³ On the contrary, the texts and letters analysed here demonstrate that in the 1810s, 1820s, and 1830s, the exiles only selectively accepted the orientalizing discourse of the Grand Tour. Exiled intellectuals continued to employ the analytic tools provided by the Italian Enlightenment, and to subscribe to the view that Italy would indeed soon be regenerated. At the same time, when they employed notions of barbarity to describe the masses, they did so more on the basis of their direct experiences of popular hostility to liberalism in Italy, Latin America, and Spain, than because of their endorsement of northern European views of southern backwardness. The case of the dialogue unfolding between Lady Morgan and her Italian acquaintances shows the sheer complexity of the intellectual exchanges taking place between traveller and travelled, which challenge monodirectional explanations of the dynamics of the encounters taking place during ⁹² S. Patriarca, ‘Indolence and Regeneration: Tropes and Tensions of Risorgimento Patriotism’, The American Historical Review, 110 (2005), 380–408, at p. 383. ⁹³ M. Petrusewicz, Come il Meridione divenne una Questione: Rappresentazioni del Sud prima e dopo il Quarantotto (Soveria Mannelli, 1998).

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the Grand Tour. To use once again a term coined by Mary Louise Pratt, the Grand Tour also facilitated phenomena of transculturation, that is to say, the transfer of the ideas of the travelled by way of the travellers’ writings.⁹⁴ Melissa Calaresu has argued that the Neapolitan patriotism emerging in the late eighteenth century in reaction to the Grand Tour’s representations of Naples may have led to a weakening of Enlightenment cosmopolitanism, and reinforced their understanding of Neapolitan patriotism as an independent identity. However, the case of Lady Morgan shows that contacts and intellectual exchanges between travellers and travelled after 1815 led to the acceptance of a common set of political ideas and values. While the Grand Tour in the Romantic period may well have helped to define separate identities, at the same time it fostered a shared culture among European liberal elites. As the exiles’ success in communicating ‘Italy’s question’ to the British elites demonstrates, they also managed to formulate and explain the Risorgimento in their own terms. This was in turn facilitated by the fact that the English public recognized the values and principles of the exiles as familiar, as posing no threat to their own identity, but serving rather to confirm what they took to be the foundation of Britishness. Finally, the contacts between the exiles and the political establishment, as well as their efforts to influence public opinion, demonstrate that well before Mazzini’s activities the English public had been aware of the Italian question as conceived by Italian patriots. Mazzini undoubtedly benefited from the access to some members of English society that Foscolo and the 1821 revolutionaries had enjoyed, sustaining contacts with John Bowring, Thomas Campbell, and Charles MacFarlane. However, given his republicanism, he could hardly frequent the Whig grandees and the Establishment, whereas the liberal moderates of course could. It was precisely the constitutional monarchism and federalism so much despised by Mazzini that had made their ideas acceptable to the Edinburgh Reviewers and to Holland House. This exclusion had in turn influenced the manner in which Mazzini promoted political beliefs in England. Since the access granted Pecchio or Panizzi to government circles was denied to Mazzini, republican circles, radicals, and Chartists represented his natural social environment in England. Continuing the efforts that his predecessors had made to reach out to English public opinion through the press, Mazzini used his contact with John Bowring to good effect, and wrote on Italian literature and history in the Westminster Review.⁹⁵ Mazzini’s novel contribution to the increasing popularity of the Italian cause in England was due to his ability to mobilize and organize public opinion in ⁹⁴ M. L. Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London and New York, 1992), pp. 5–7. ⁹⁵ On Mazzini’s exile before 1848 see R. Sarti, Mazzini: A Life for the Religion of Politics (Westport, CT, 1997), pp. 100 and ff.


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new ways. He grasped that the democrats had more to gain by seeking and campaigning for the direct support of a wide spectrum of public opinion. This implied a rejection of the approach adopted by moderate exiles like Pecchio, Panizzi, and Pepoli. The establishment of the Society of the Friends of Italy, in 1851, was in line with this strategy. Middle-class liberals, free traders, parliamentary reformers, radicals, intellectuals, Chartists, Dissenters, and secularists were among the 800 members who joined the Society throughout the country. Such forms of direct engagement with civil society had been unknown to the earlier exiles. Yet when the Society collapsed in 1853, following the failure of the Milan uprising and the resulting dip in Mazzini’s popularity, English Mazzinians like James Stansfeld, William Ashurst, and Joseph Cowen, founded a new organization, the Emancipation of Italy Fund Committee, which targeted the English working classes.⁹⁶ Workers from Newcastle responded enthusiastically to the appeal. Mazzini proudly wrote that, thanks to his activism, among the English ‘the people of Italy had now replaced an aristocracy whose memory dated back to the patrician emigration of 1821.’⁹⁷ Mazzini’s version of the Risorgimento owed its appeal in England to a number of different factors. It was facilitated by the increasing interest in the national questions in Europe shown by the Chartists, who linked their political cause with those of the European revolutionaries, and made Mazzini one of their heroes. This process of ‘appropriation’ was in turn encouraged by the appeal that a number of aspects of Mazzini’s thought held for radicals. The intense religious dimension of Mazzini’s message, with its distinctive puritanical tone, rang familiar to many radicals, whose culture was heavily influenced by dissent. Mazzini’s religiosity in fact stressed an austere morality, a sense of duty towards the community as opposed to the mere assertion of individual rights, and the need for a moral regeneration in order to establish a just society.⁹⁸ As had been the case with the exiles in the 1820s and 1830s, British support for Mazzini owed much also to the anticlerical nature of his propaganda. Some of the political solutions proposed by Mazzini were profoundly different from those advocated by the liberals and by Panizzi, but the fact that Italy’s right to emancipation was by then uncontroversial was not due to him alone. Indeed, Mazzini’s ability to influence English middleclass understanding of the Risorgimento had been facilitated by twenty years of exposure to the propaganda of Panizzi, Pecchio, and Foscolo. As Mazzini who, having recently settled in London, begrudgingly admitted, Foscolo and his ⁹⁶ M. Finn, After Chartism: Class and Nation in English Radical Politics (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 166–71; O’Connor, The Romance of Italy, pp. 77–87. ⁹⁷ Mazzini, ‘Agli italiani, Marzo 1853’, in idem, Scritti politici di Giuseppe Mazzini, ed. T. Grandi and A. Comba ( Turin, 1972), pp. 713–14. On the Fund see O’Connor, The Romance of Italy, pp. 89–90. ⁹⁸ E. Biagini, Liberty, Retrenchment, and Reform: Popular Liberalism in the Age of Gladstone, 1860–1880 (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 46–50.

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fellow exiles’ ideas about the conditions of Italy had greatly influenced English public opinion: Here, from 1821 onwards they have not known anything about Italy: they judge it according to the standards of that time, literature as well as politics etc. The changes in opinion which have occurred since 1830, or which, for the sake of our country, we must assume have occurred, are no longer perceived. In politics, federalism, constitutional monarchy, and the inability to act independently, are things accepted as axiomatic: in literature Manzoni and Pellico are the pillars of Hercules: one does not go beyond that [. . .] the journals, which at the time of Foscolo, Pecchio, and others used to talk often about our mother country have been silent for long; Italy has died for everybody [. . .]⁹⁹

The support that the Risorgimento had gained in the 1850s and 1860s was not a completely new phenomenon, but rather built on the success the exiles had had with the liberal public. ⁹⁹ Mazzini to his mother, 7 September 1837, in SEI, 14, p. 82.

Epilogue As a veteran of liberty, he had followed her for many a long year as she wandered from country to country, and wherever the banner of the peoples had been raised he had brought his sword and paid with his blood. He had fought for France in 1812, and the Cossacks’ lance had left him a memory of the Beresina, which had earned him the Légion d’honneur and a long series of persecutions at the hands of the men of the Restoration. One of the last to lay down his arms, on the banks of the Loire, when he saw that all was lost, he burnt his regiment’s standard, drank its ashes and left for Italy in order to hasten the explosion of 1821.—Once there, proscribed, then sentenced to death for having divined the deepest wishes of his country, he went to fight for the liberty of the Hellenes. Two years later, he ran to share the fate of his companions of misfortune in Catalonia. There he had seen French hands shred the standard of liberty, French bullets harvest Italy’s elite at Mataro, soldiers who had fought at Moscow play their part in restoring the throne of despotism, and the Inquisition. Then it was that he had said to himself: one can expect nothing from men; and he had sworn an oath to live thenceforth in humble obscurity and never to take up these arms again, which had not allowed him to win so much as an inch of ground in order to die free there.¹

F RO M P O L I T I C A L D E F E AT TO M E M O RY Very few of those who had left Italy between 1815 and 1821 would ever return. One of those who did, Carlo Beolchi, left a vivid account of what it meant to him in May 1850 to set foot again in the Piedmontese capital. For all his ill-concealed excitement, Beolchi also felt a profound sense of alienation, as if he were in an unknown city, surrounded by strangers, and as if he were in exile in his own land: Oh how moved I was to see those I had left in Spain, in the prime of their youth, now stooped and bowed! How much had weariness affected the original aspect of their faces, transformed by time and misfortune! I would never have recognized some of them, had it not been for their voices, and even more for their names [. . .] They had left the patria as young men but came back old and white-haired.² ¹ G. Mazzini, ‘Une nuit de Rimini en 1831’ [1831], SEI, 2, pp. 8–9. ² C. Beolchi, Reminiscenze dell’esilio ( Turin, 1852), p. 225.

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According to Beolchi, of the thousand exiles who had left their fatherland, fewer than fifty had survived.³ By the mid-1830s, some of the most prominent members of the Risorgimento diaspora had already died: Santarosa in 1825, Foscolo in 1827, Linati and Salfi in 1832, Pecchio in 1835. Other exiles, such as Panizzi, Arrivabene or Palma di Cesnola, settled in their host countries and ‘turned native’, becoming part of the intellectual and political establishment. Arrivabene, for instance, after obtaining Belgian citizenship, attended to emigration and labourers’ welfare for the Belgian government, and in 1846 tried to set up a customs treaty between Belgium and France. While Arrivabene was Italo-Belgian, and Panizzi Anglo-Italian, Palma died as Italo-Greek in 1850. In 1840 he agreed to preside over the Commercial Tribunal of Sira, and later to become Magistrate in Athens at the Court of Appeal.⁴ Pellegrino Rossi, for many years Italo-Swiss, became Italo-French, since he held a chair of political economy and then of constitutional law in Paris, was made a peer, and in 1845 became Plenipotentiary Minister of France in the Papal States. A few of them, like Pepe, Santangelo, and De Meester, survived to participate in a military capacity in the 1848 revolutions. Yet, as Beolchi recalled, the vast majority disappeared into some remote part of the world and never returned to Italy. After the 1830s those belonging to Beolchi’s generation had to face new ideas and political movements; and the greatest political challenge within the patriotic movement came from Mazzini’s Giovine Italia. The majority were immediately attracted to his project, which soon became hegemonic among the political e´migrés. At the same time, since much of Mazzini’s emphasis on the generational nature of his organization represented an explicit attack on the older exiles, many bitterly resented their own marginalization and the dismissal of their past political experiences. While Giovine Italia was embraced by most of the younger e´migrés, membership was denied to those who were over forty years old, a criterion which excluded those who had left Italy either in 1815 or after 1821. Thus Giovita Scalvini, a member of the influential group of moderate exiles revolving around Costanza Visconti Arconati in Brussels, complained in 1832 that they were now treated like ‘dotards from the times of the Argonauts’.⁵ After 1830, the political agenda and strategy of the Carbonari had been defeated. Neither insurrection organized through secret societies nor diplomatic pressure upon European governments had succeeded. Although this did not prevent patriots of the older generation from being attracted to Mazzini’s revolutionary ideas and projects, it was mostly those born after 1800 who flocked to Giovine Italia. Mazzini’s success after 1832 was predicated upon the rejection of the political strategies of the older exiled revolutionaries. The gulf between the older exiles and ³ Beolchi, Reminiscenze, p. 227. ⁴ ‘Alerino Palma’, in Panteon dei martiri della libertà Italiana, 2 vols (2nd edn, Turin, 1852), ii, pp. 489–505. ⁵ Quoted in F. Della Peruta, Mazzini e i rivoluzionari italiani: Il partito d’azione 1830–1845 (Milan, 1974), pp. 150–1.

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Mazzini was generational as well as intellectual, since it divided those born in the eighteenth century, whose political education had been shaped by the principles of the Enlightenment and the expectations and disappointments fostered by Napoleonic rule, from those too young to have had direct experience of those years. The political assessment that Mazzini and the Risorgimento democrats of later generations made of the exiled Carbonari and the Napoleonists was marked by a profound ideological distance. Nor did Mazzini seek to mask his scant respect for the political views of the exiled Carbonari. For Mazzini, the democrats of the previous generation had been too closely indebted to the French Revolution and to eighteenth-century materialism for their ideas to be of much value. The work of Luigi Angeloni, Mazzini wrote, though highly instructive and edifying, was ‘of little use to the educated youth of Italy’, given his classical style and, above all, his ideas on religion.⁶ An equally wide gulf divided Mazzini from the most famous of the early democratic exiles, Ugo Foscolo. In spite of his admiration for the poet and the patriot, which accounts for his decision to edit Foscolo’s unpublished political works in 1844, in his Introduction to the Scritti politici he took a firm stand against Foscolo’s philosophical materialism and his revolutionary ideals. These were too directly indebted to the French Revolution to be appreciated by Mazzini, who considered its ‘foreign’ intellectual and political background to be harmful to the Risorgimento.⁷ It was thus at once to Foscolo’s ‘Jacobinism’, and to the pessimism about the possibility of Italy’s emancipation evident in his writings in exile that Mazzini objected. Only among the anti-Mazzinians could Foscolo’s democratic credentials be rescued.⁸ Although not inclined to approve of his pessimism as regards Italy’s chances of winning its freedom, Giuseppe Ferrari’s extensive treatment of Foscolo’s politics and literature betrays a real sympathy for the exiled poet, who is described as unmistakably democratic. Ferrari went so far as to describe him as a true revolutionary inspired by the liberty of the ancients, who remained hostile to the ‘liberalism of the bourgeois and the tradesmen’.⁹ Likewise, Cattaneo, while critical of the poet’s ‘ancient’ understanding of freedom and distrust of progress, was readier than Mazzini to recognize the importance of Foscolo in influencing new generations of patriots.¹⁰ ⁶ Mazzini, ‘Luigi Angeloni’ [1842], in SEI, 25, pp. 103–6. ⁷ Mazzini, Scritti politici inediti di Ugo Foscolo (Lugano, 1844), p. xxxiii. On Mazzini’s reception of Foscolo I am indebted here to the acute observations of Del Vento, Un allievo della rivoluzione: Ugo Foscolo dal ‘‘noviziato letterario’’ al ‘‘nuovo classicismo’’ (1795–1806) (Bologna, 2003), pp. 3–6. ⁸ C. Del Vento, Un allievo della rivoluzione, p. 7. ⁹ G. Ferrari, I partiti politici Italiani dal 1789 al 1848, ed. F. Somigliano (Città di Castello, 1921), pp. 84–99. Quotation from p. 99. An earlier version was published as ‘La rivoluzione e i rivoluzionari in Italia’ in the Revue des Deux Mondes between 1844 and 1845. ¹⁰ Cattaneo, ‘Ugo Foscolo e l’Italia’ [1860], in idem, Scritti letterari, ed. P. Treves, 2 vols ( Florence, 1981), i, 496–555.

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At the same time, the democrats’ condemnation of the politics of those involved in the 1820 revolution was uniformly severe. For instance, Mazzini warned his readership against Santarosa’s mistake of expecting independence and freedom from a monarch, although he claimed that ‘Intolerant about principles, we must be extremely tolerant in judging those individuals who made mistakes because of the times and their genius, but not because of their heart.’¹¹ Ferrari was even less sympathetic towards the leaders of the 1821 revolutions. In reviewing Santarosa’s and Pepe’s accounts of the revolutions published in exile, Ferrari observed that they had failed to understand that the true reason for their defeat had been the lack of popular support for their programme, and the distance between the people and the revolutionary leadership, as theirs had been ‘conspiracies hatched close to the seat of power.’¹² Mazzini’s rejection of these exiles’ politics prevented him from acknowledging the many intellectual debts he owed them, such as the continuities between his and their cosmopolitan patriotism, and helped to consign to oblivion the genuinely democratic culture sustained by the patriots of the earlier generation. While too moderate for the democrats, the exiles’ politics might well have been too radical for the moderates. Unlike the exiles, Cesare Balbo or Vincenzo Gioberti were wary of the revolutionary heritage and, in the wake of Cuoco, condemned the tendency to apply the abstract principles of the French Revolution to Italy. As mentioned earlier, precisely with Cuoco in mind the exiles have been accused of being too abstract in their political views. To understand the political difference between the exiles and these moderates, it is worth bearing in mind that while Santarosa decided to participate in the 1820 revolution, his friend Balbo remained in the wings.¹³ Another important intellectual development to increase the distance between the exiles and the moderates was the emergence of Catholicism as a key element in liberal political discourse during the 1830s. Among moderates Christian morality became the overarching framework within which to situate economic and social debates. This kind of morality differed, however, from that advocated by Pecchio, which had been exclusively based on the Italian Enlightenment notion of public happiness, and from that of Arrivabene, who had considered the principles of (Protestant) Christianity and the laws of political economy to be in complete harmony. By contrast, the moderates subordinated the laws of economics and the social transformations precipitated by the development of a commercial society to Catholicism’s own principles of justice, which were invoked in order to forestall or to modify the social inequalities and the horrors of pauperism.¹⁴ Thus, soon after their deaths, ¹¹ Mazzini, ‘Santarosa’ [1840], in SEI, 25, 33–37. Quotation from p. 36. ¹² Ferrari, I partiti politici, pp. 115–17. ¹³ On Balbo’s decision see the classic E. Passerin D’Entrèves, La giovinezza di Cesare Balbo ( Florence, 1940), pp. 126–8. ¹⁴ Besides R. Romani, ‘L’economia politica dei moderati 1830–1848’, Società e Storia, 29 (2006), 21–49, on the role of religion in their thought see S. La Salvia, ‘Il moderatismo in Italia’,

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exiles like Pecchio and Salfi were honoured with sympathetic biographies not by the Mazzinians nor by the moderates, but by companions who shared similar political ideals and belonged to the same generation. For example, the former Napoleonist Camillo Ugoni, then exiled in Paris, wrote a biography of Pecchio which praised the moderate nature of his political thought, while Renzi’s tribute to Salfi was at pains to stress both the democratic credentials of the Calabrese writer and his achievements as a historian of Italian literature.¹⁵ It was perhaps Giacomo Durando who summarized the viewpoint of the following generation of emigrants, when he wrote that the patriots meeting in exile from different provinces of Italy in the 1820s had formed for the first time ‘an itinerant patria, which, although not real, had nonetheless all the instincts, the vices and virtues of a true one’, but they had also been a failed generation, wasting ten years in ‘laments and fruitless longings’.¹⁶ The exiles, however, were not forgotten, nor were their ideas and their experiences ignored in the following decades. Santarosa’s writings, as well as Pepe’s and Pecchio’s studies of the Spanish and Portuguese revolutions became standard points of reference for those wishing to understand the politics of the 1820 revolutionary movement.¹⁷ More importantly, 1848 offered new opportunities for the reappropriation of the exiles’ ideas both during and after the revolution. To begin with, the few survivors of the generation of 1821, when participating in the 1848 revolutions, invariably posited a link between the current events and those of 1821. In a meeting of a Patriotic Society in Milan during the 1848 revolution, Luigi Monteggia thus celebrated the sacrifice of two of his companions, Alessandro Poggiolini and Giacinto Gaddi, who had died very young fighting in Spain. Indeed, Monteggia maintained that in 1821 the radicalism of a section of the Piedmontese revolutionaries had alienated the king, whose final disavowal of the Federati’s requests for a constitution sealed the end of the revolution. There were obviously still valuable lessons to be learned from this episode in the context of the tension between republicans and pro-Piedmontese patriots in Milan twenty-seven years later.¹⁸ Second, the request of the 1821 revolutionaries for a constitution had become, at least temporarily, a reality in in U. Corsini and R. Lill (eds), ‘Istituzioni e ideologie in Italia e in Germania tra le rivoluzioni’, Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico, Quaderno 23 (1987), pp. 206–18. ¹⁵ A. M. Renzi, Vie politique et littéraire de F. Salf i (Paris, 1834); C. Ugoni, Vita e scritti di Giuseppe Pecchio (Paris, 1836), pp. 282–3. On Salfi see also, L. M. Greco, Vita letteraria, ossia analisi delle opere di Francesco Salfi, continuatore del Ginguené (Cosenza, 1839), which I have not been able to consult. ¹⁶ G. Durando, Della nazionalità italiana (Paris, 1846), p. 7. ¹⁷ As an example see, for instance, C. Balbo, ‘Memorie sulla rivoluzione piemontese del 1821’ [1822], in idem, Storia d’Italia e altri scritti editi e inediti, ed. M. Fubini Leuzzi ( Turin, 1984), p. 912, where he quotes Pecchio’s Sei mesi in Ispagna nel 1821. Lettere a Ledi G.O. (Madrid, 1821). On Santarosa and Cavour see ultra. ¹⁸ L. Monteggia, Alcuni Ricordi consacrati alla memoria di Alessandro Poggiolini e di Giacinto Gaddi giovani milanesi morti in Spagna combattendo per la libertà nel 1822 (destinato a leggersi nel circolo patriottico) (Milan, 1848).

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1848 in most of the peninsula, and after 1848 it survived in Piedmont as one of the permanent achievements of the revolutionary period. In this new context Pecchio’s Un’elezione di membri del parlamento in Inghilterra was republished in Rome in 1848, with a Preface encouraging the citizens of Rome to participate in the elections, and, by so doing, to demonstrate their Italian patriotism. A new edition of Santarosa’s Memoirs, the very first in Italy, appeared in Genoa in the aftermath of the revolution, when the programme of 1821 seemed to be accomplished and to have resulted in ‘a semi-national representation, a nucleus of liberal elements, which could in a short space of time be extended to all the rest of Italy’.¹⁹ The political convergence between moderate liberalism, the liberal phase inaugurated by the Savoyard Monarchy with the introduction of a constitution, and the majority of the nationalists, who in pursuit of their own objective had rallied to the Piedmontese leadership, created new conditions for the reappropriation of the exiles’ memory and ideas. This re-appropriation was in turn facilitated by personal and family connections existing between the Piedmontese liberals and the leaders of the 1821 revolutions. The price to pay for such a reappropriation might be the consigning to oblivion of the exiles’ revolutionary past, and a censorship of any unduly radical elements of their thought or political initiatives. This was the case with Massimo d’Azeglio’s celebration of his friend Giacinto Collegno, whose Diario dell’Assedio di Navarino he published in 1857 with a heartfelt biographical note. D’Azeglio wrote that Collegno had displayed political moderation and sound judgement during the revolutions in Spain and in Greece, but he omitted to mention his involvement in the Piedmontese revolution. For d’Azeglio the greatest achievement of this ‘longstanding advocate of representative government’ had been to make a case for Italy and the Italians ‘in the centres of Europe’s civilization’, thereby drastically revising perceptions of his homeland abroad.²⁰ The memory of Santarosa likewise lived on within the members of the Piedmontese liberal establishment, to which his own family belonged. Many Piedmontese liberals considered themselves to be the political heirs of Santarosa, and viewed their political programme as the fulfilment of the exile’s own aspirations.²¹ For instance, the young Cavour had learnt about Santarosa’s life from Victor Cousin’s account in the Revue des Deux Mondes, and had studied his account of the Piedmontese revolution when drafting his own narrative of that event. Cavour’s support for the ideas of the juste milieu ¹⁹ Della Rivoluzione Piemontese nel 1821: Versione eseguita sulla terza edizione francese (Genoa, 1849), pp. iv–v. ²⁰ M. d’Azeglio, ‘Ricordo d’una Vita Italiana. Giacinto Collegno’, in G. Collegno, Diario dell’Assedio di Navarino ( Turin, 1857), pp. 7–22, quotations from pp. 8, 10–11, 17. ²¹ See also Collegno’s letter to Cousin, and Lisio’s letter to Cousin, in S. Mastellone, Victor Cousin e il Risorgimento italiano ( Florence, 1955), p. 124–6.

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established a direct connection with Santarosa’s political stance.²² Cavour did not hesitate to describe his liberalism, and in particular his advocacy of the development of a railway network in Italy, and his support for Balbo’s idea of an Italian union, as in tune with Santarosa’s ideas.²³ As discussed in the previous chapters, Anglophilia represented an important common trait that linked the moderates and the exiles. As recalled by an anonymous biographer in 1851, ‘Pecchio in his books helped to render the British name popular and respected among us, and by describing the free institutions that represent the pride of that people, he taught us a love for, and an understanding of liberty.’²⁴ In 1852 a new edition of all his economic writings was published in Turin.²⁵ Like Santarosa, Pecchio, and Foscolo, the Tuscan and Piedmontese conservative intelligentsia—for example Capponi, Balbo, and d’Azeglio—looked to Britain as a model of superior civilization, advocated free trade and admired the English political model. The admiration of this group for the economic policies of Sir Robert Peel and for the ideas of Richard Cobden replaced Foscolo’s, Arrivabene’s, and Pecchio’s attraction to Holland House and to the politics of the Edinburgh Reviewers. Like the exiles, however, they embraced a ‘modernized’ idea of aristocracy based on notions of merit and civic virtues which they believed they had found in Britain.²⁶ The Anglophilia of Cavour in particular, and this to a greater degree than anyone else, was in line with that displayed by the exiles between the 1820s and 1830s, being based on a genuine admiration for the social mobility and economic dynamism of the island, directly observed during his trip to Great Britain in 1835.²⁷ After Pecchio and Arrivabene, Cavour was one of the few Italian observers to believe that British workers were better off than their continental counterparts.²⁸ Like Pecchio, Cavour viewed England’s success as living proof ²² Santarosa was himself a cousin of Camillo Cavour, and his son Teodoro became one of Cavour’s main collaborators. A. Olmo, ‘Il conte Teodoro di Santa Rosa, collaboratore e confidente di Camillo Cavour’, in Bollettino della Società per gli Studi Storici, Archeologici e Artistici nella Provincia di Cuneo, 46 (1961), 201–77; on Cavour and Santa Rosa I follow Mastellone, Victor Cousin, pp. 114–18. ²³ Cavour to Cousin, 4 February 1846, in J. Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire, M. Victor Cousin: Sa vie et sa correspondance, 3 vols (Paris, 1895), i, p. 682. ²⁴ Panteon dei martiri della libertà italiana, ii, p. 61. Cattaneo owned a copy of Pecchio’s L’anno mille ottocento ventisei dell’Inghilterra (as indicated in C. Lacaita, R. Gobbo, and A. Turiel [eds], La Biblioteca di Carlo Cattaneo [Bellinzona, 2003], p. 273). ²⁵ Pecchio’s writings were republished by the Tipografia economica, in the Biblioteca dei Comuni d’Italiani in 1852. ²⁶ On the Anglophilia of the moderates see Romani, ‘L’economia politica dei moderati, 1830–1848’. ²⁷ R. Romeo, Cavour e il suo tempo, 3 vols (Bari, 1969–84), i, pp. 482–509. ²⁸ Cavour, ‘Sul pauperismo’ [1836], in idem, Scritti inediti e rari 1828–1850, ed. R. Romeo (Santena, 1971), 73–93.

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that only political freedom and civic virtues could stimulate economic prosperity. In 1847, following a wave of reforms, Cavour believed that Piedmont was ready to follow England’s example and to assume the political and economic leadership of the peninsula.²⁹ Admiration for the English social and political model was to grow among Italian liberals after 1848, when it became clear that England had been spared the upheavals of the rest of Europe, that with the demise of Chartism the industrial workers no longer represented a threat to stability and that pressures for the recognition of social demands could be dealt with through gradual reforms. The industrialist and pro-British stance first conceived in the 1820s was no longer controversial in the 1850s, when the Piedmontese capital had become the foremost intellectual centre in the peninsula. More importantly, since the 1840s, and especially after 1848, what guaranteed a place for the exiles in the collective memory of the Risorgimento was the creation first by Mazzini and the Mazzinians, and then by patriots of often widely divergent political convictions of a genealogy of martyrs and heroes which became an integral part of the Italian national discourse. What Mazzini and his contemporaries did was to describe themselves as descendants of that generation of exiles, presented as the initiators of the Risorgimento itself. Their exile had been one of the forms of sacrifice that Italians had had to endure in order to achieve their goals, and evidence of their commitment to the national cause.³⁰ Mazzini might well have disagreed with Foscolo’s, Angeloni’s, or Santarosa’s ideas, but he felt it to be his duty to honour their memory and to transmit it to succeeding generations. He thus hoped that Foscolo’s example of superior moral qualities in particular might inspire the younger patriots to carry on the struggle for national emancipation.³¹ The creation of a new national platform supported by Piedmont, capable of attracting many former republicans disappointed with the results of the 1848 revolution, further encouraged this bipartisan reappropriation of the exiles’ role in the Risorgimento. The substantial exile community living in Turin in the 1850s also played its part in reviving the memory of the 1821 exiles as precursors of the moderates’ political agenda. In 1852 the financial aid of the Piedmontese government made possible the publication of the Panteon dei martiri della libertà Italiana. This gallery of Italian heroes written by the exiles themselves and containing the biographies of Santarosa, Rosaroll, Pecchio, Buonarroti, Angeloni, Bianco, Pacchiarotti and others, was published with the goal of raising funds to support the poorest members of ²⁹ Cavour, ‘Influenza delle riforme sulle condizioni economiche dell’Italia’ [1847], now in Cavour, Tutti gli scritti di Cavour, ed. C. Pischedda and G. Talamo ( Turin, 1976)., iii, pp. 1011–14. ³⁰ See, for instance, A. Vannucci, I martiri della libertà, 2 vols (Livorno, 1849); on the exiles esp. i, pp. 198–210, where he describes their experience by using Pecchio’s Semi-Serious observations. ³¹ I have explored these topics in M. Isabella, ‘Exile and Nationalism: The Case of the Risorgimento’, European History Quarterly, 36 (2006), 493–520.

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the refugee community.³² Pepe himself was remembered on his death by the e´migrés in Turin, who attended his funeral in great numbers, as ‘the man of three revolutions, who seemed to be accompanied by the shades of Pagano and of Cirillo, of Giuseppe and Alessandro Poerio, and of Cesare Rosaroll’.³³ This bipartisan celebration was also reflected in the Martirologio Italiano of Giuseppe Ricciardi, an exile whose republicanism did not prevent him from paying homage to the activities, and intellectual achievements as political writers of Marochetti, Santarosa, Pecchio, and all their contemporaries.³⁴ Ricciardi did, however, single out Santarosa, who ‘soars like an eagle above all the others’.³⁵ Also outside Italy the memory of the exiles served the purpose of turning the Risorgimento into a popular and, at the same time, moderate cause. The memory of the 1821 generation and their experiences both in Europe and Italy was preserved by survivors such as Pepe or Arrivabene, whose Memoirs were translated into French and English.³⁶ Their recollections fostered an image of Italy that defied many of the northern stereotypes about Italians. Risorgimento patriots could hardly have come from a backward country with an enervated populace, given their displays of courage and military virtues that could rival those of other long-established national communities. The theme of the exiles as Italians with regenerated moral qualities and exceptional talents was also propagated by the European press. The representations of exiles like Collegno, Santarosa and Rossi as outstanding individuals of moderate political beliefs, as hostile to any form of extremism, gave the Risorgimento additional appeal among foreign public audiences as a respectable political project.³⁷ By 1860 the exiles could thus be seen as the political precursors of the Kingdom of Italy both inside and outside the peninsula. ³² On the aims of the publication and the financial support of the Piemontese government see Panteon dei martiri della libertà Italiana, pp. iii–vi. ³³ F. Carrano, Vita di Guglielmo Pepe ( Turin, 1857), p. 241. ³⁴ G. Ricciardi, Martirologio Italiano dal 1792 al 1847: Libri Dieci ( Florence, 1860), pp. 132–3. He also published Profili biografici di contemporanei, in Opere (Naples, 1861), which included biographies of Arrivabene, Libri, and Carlo Pepoli. ³⁵ Ibid., p. 133. ³⁶ G. Arrivabene, Intorno ad un’epoca della mia vita, Memorie ( Turin, 1860); An Epoch of My Life:. Memoirs of Count John Arrivabene (London, 1862); Memorie della mia vita, 1795–1859, ( Florence, 1879), with a second edition the following year; Memorie del Generale Guglielmo Pepe intorno alla sua vita e ai recenti casi d’Italia, etc (Paris, 1844), and besides the already quoted English edition, one appeared in French as Mémoires du général Pepé sur les principaux e´vénements politiques et militaires de l’Italie moderne (Paris, 1847). ³⁷ C. de Mazade, ‘Une vie d’émigré italien’, Revue des Deux Mondes, 29 (1859), 460–76; idem, ‘Pellegrino Rossi, l’Italie et la Papauté’, Revue, 31 (1861), 718–51.

Conclusions The spectacle of the foreign world, and of its different customs, has opened a new horizon to me: the intellectual activity which reigns in the countries in which I have lived [. . .] has impelled me to make use of my intelligence, bringing to an end some literary works which are, perhaps, not entirely useless to my country, and from which I have derived the purest pleasures.¹

E X I L E A N D N AT I O N A L C O N S C I O U S N E S S What can the experience of the patriots living abroad between 1815 and 1835 tell us about the nature of the nation of the Risorgimento? Paul Ginsborg and Alberto Banti have recently argued that in its symbolic versions, the nation of the Risorgimento was represented as a community with strong family ties serving to define its inner cohesion, and by a hatred for the enemy invariably viewed as an external threat.² What the experience of exile I have discussed suggests, however, is the importance of a different but equally crucial mode of interaction with other national communities. This different model, although compatible with the one outlined above, goes beyond mere oppositionality and antagonism to recognize the importance of the processes of exchange in the formation of separate identities. As much as a national identity requires an external enemy to define itself and to achieve internal cohesion, in the case of a ‘late comer’ community like the Italian, there is also the need for external models to take inspiration from and for other communities to emulate, to praise, and to win the support of in its own struggle. As Aurelio Macchioro has noted, the Risorgimento may be seen as the outcome of two principal and interrelated intellectual processes: the discussion and transmission of foreign models and the forging of a national pride through the idea of Italian primacy.³ Indeed, different generations and different patriots combined these two processes in a variety of ways. After 1815, Romanticism and ¹ G. Arrivabene, An Epoch of My Life (London, 1862), p. 109–10. ² A. M. Banti and P. Ginsborg, ‘Introduzione’, in their Il Risorgimento, in Storia d’Italia, Annali 22 ( Turin, 2007), pp. xxxviii–xli. ³ Aurelio Macchioro stressed the importance of these two interlinked processes in ‘La raccolta Custodi ‘‘Scrittori Classici Italiani di Economia’’ ’, in D. Rota (ed.), Pietro Custodi tra rivoluzione e restaurazione, 2 vols (Lecco, 1989), ii, p. 144.

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Romagnosi’s speculations about the importance of ‘incivilimento dativo’, made it possible to formulate identities in which foreign models were seen as crucial and welcome. Exile gave shape to the most cosmopolitan and open model of identity produced by the Italian national movement. This is true also if we look at the metaphoric dimension of national discourse as first developed in the 1820s and 1830s, based as it was on ideas of international brotherhood and solidarity. Research on diasporic identities shows that in the process of redefining their allegiances migrants are caught between the dilemma of retaining their own original culture and traditions and absorbing that of their host country. In Gabriel Sheffer’s words, members of stateless diasporas ‘will be particularly torn between memories of their homeland and the wish to recapture the past, on one hand, and the need to comply with the norms of their host country, on the other’.⁴ Yet while total rejection or complete assimilation may occur, research on modern migrant communities shows that contemporary ethnic diasporas often opt for a composite, hybrid, and cosmopolitan identity which lies somewhere ‘in between’ their original identity and the one they are confronted with in the community they have joined.⁵ The notion of hybridity draws our attention to the renegotiation that occurs between different cultures and which gives rise to new forms of cultural difference, whose distinctness lies in their heterogeneous nature.⁶ Such a notion has been first and foremost applied to contemporary, and in particular, post-colonial diasporic identities, whose development challenges nation-states and their internal cultural homogeneity by rejecting a complete and full assimilation.⁷ However, as I hope I have demonstrated, in Restoration Europe the process of hybridization fostered by the emigration of the exile minorities, rather than representing evidence of the crisis of nationalisms led to the formation of new forms of national consciousness. The Italian cultural and political community the exiles were conceiving was an original combination of foreign qualities and institutions with the local intellectual and administrative tradition. In most cases they neither advocated the slavish adoption of external models, nor did they suggest rejecting all external influence. Many of them, like the Italo-Greek Foscolo or the Italo-French Rossi, went so far as to acknowledge their attachment ⁴ G. Sheffer, Diaspora Politics: At Home Abroad (Cambridge, 2003), p. 153. ⁵ Ibid., pp. 152–4. ⁶ S. Hall, ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’, in J. Rutherford (ed.), Identity: Community, Culture, Difference (London, 1990), pp. 222–37; H. Bhabha, ‘DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation’, in idem (ed.), Nation and Narration (London, 1990), 291–322. On the processual dimension of the concept of hybridity see P. Werbner, ‘Introduction: The dialectics of Cultural Hybridity’, in P. Werbner and T. Modood (eds), Debating Cultural Hybridity: Multi-Cultural Identities and the Politics of Anti-Racism (London and Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1997), pp. 1–26. ⁷ S. Vertovec, ‘Transnational Challenges to the ‘‘New’’ Multiculturalism’, Transnational Community Working Papers, 2001, in (accessed 16 March 2009).

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to two different national communities. In recasting their patria, they had no qualms about acknowledging the debt they owed to other national cultures and experiences. While the notion of ‘primacy’ formulated by Salfi, Pecchio and Foscolo was instrumental in revaluating the Italian cultural tradition and history, it was not accompanied by any claim to superiority, save in times past. Indeed, the notion was designed to situate the intellectual achievements of Italian culture in a broader European framework. At the same time, Italian exile patriotism did not always endorse composite and cosmopolitan models of nationhood. Indeed, modern diasporas may in some cases advance ideas of nationhood that are essentialist, and not cosmopolitan.⁸ Two of the most influential Risorgimento patriots slowly but steadily moved away from the earlier, more open notion of identity. Thus, Giuseppe Mazzini though keen, as we discussed earlier, to endorse a model of civilization which celebrated cultural exchanges, also blamed the older exiles for an excessive and thoughtlessly cosmopolitan tendency to imitate foreign models, and from France in particular. It was, however, another exile of the same generation, Vincenzo Gioberti, who went further than Mazzini in rejecting the attitude towards foreign ideas proposed by the earlier wave of exiles. In principle Gioberti did not deny the importance of exile as an intellectual experience which would broaden one’s intellectual horizons, nor did he deny the role of emigration in world history as a key vector of dissemination of civilization.⁹ Like Mazzini, he continued to endorse ideas of international brotherhood and solidarity among nations. However, his warnings against imitating foreign identities were unequivocal, and explicitly addressed to the exiles. In ‘Exhortation to the Exiles’ in his Del primato morale e civile degli italiani (1843), Gioberti thus wrote: Beware of the customs and errors of the country where you live: indeed, study the men and their affairs; but keep the national genius intact, and keep yourself untainted by foreign opinions and habits: Know yourselves to be freeborn Italians, thinking and feeling in true Italian fashion even among the barbarians, since the best proof you can give of a noble affection for your native land is to resist foreign blandishments.¹⁰

Combining Vittorio Alfieri’s Gallophobia with Vincenzo Cuoco’s hostility towards the transfer of foreign ideas, Gioberti was disturbed by the influence of French revolutionary thought on the exiles, but he also extended this distrust to any and every foreign model. While less markedly hostile to England, he was very critical of its social and economic model, which he considered as antithetical to his own values. The tension between the acknowledgement ⁸ On these types of diaspora identities see K. Mitchell, ‘Different Diasporas and the Hype of Hybridity’, in Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 15 (1997), 533–53; M. Kaldor, ‘Cosmopolitanism versus Nationalism: The New Divide?’, in R. Caplan and J. Feffer (eds), Europe’s New Nationalism: States and Minorities in Conflict (New York, 1996), 42–58. ⁹ V. Gioberti, Prolegomeni del Primato [1845], 2 vols ( Turin, 1926), ii, pp. 111–14. ¹⁰ V. Gioberti, Del Primato morale e civile degli italiani [1843], 2 vols ( Turin, 1920), ii, p. 4.

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that civilization arose out of a process of cultural exchange, and the belief that national identity needed to be protected against external contaminations was resolved in favour of the latter. In the Prolegomeni, published two years after the Primato, Gioberti, once more specifically concerned with the exiles, argued that if exposed to foreign influences, they would ‘become hybrid and amphibious, lose their productive vein, and resemble those plants which, once transplanted from their climate and native soil, become wholly sterile’.¹¹ While not ruling out completely the possibility of learning from foreigners, Gioberti offered a model of identity which rejected miscegenation and external influence as a form of contamination, endorsing an almost biological model of identity, whose distinctness he claimed to be part of a ‘natural’ order. Reversing the pattern of relationship conceived by his predecessors, Gioberti in fact claimed that the primary task of exiles was not to learn from foreigners, but rather to disseminate in the world the superior ideas of Italian culture and civilization based on the universal values of Catholicism. His distrust of foreign influences would have been unimaginable among the exiles only ten years earlier. In this respect, Gioberti felt much closer to contemporary nationalists like the Polish Mickiewicz, who advocated an essentialist concept of nationhood based on the conviction of the superiority of Polish Catholic civilization, than to Arrivabene, Pecchio, Salfi and their contemporaries.¹² This variety and diversity of attitudes towards foreign influences leads me to my final point. The cultural analysis of the Risorgimento nation recently proposed by historians stresses the existence of a number of shared elements in the national discourse, which is judged to be homogenous in nature. Admittedly, much in the exiles’ debates points to the existence of elements in their national discourse which were universally accepted.¹³ The myth of guerrilla-warfare formulated with reference to Spain, and that of military heroes leading the nation to freedom developed in the context of the exiles’ engagement with Spanish and Latin American politics, which continued to haunt the political imagination of Italian patriots in later decades, were adopted by democratic and moderate exiles alike. By the same token, the exiles’ cosmopolitan patriotism overrode any subtler ideological divisions. At the same time, however, when they discussed the role of the aristocracy, the nature of the various constitutions that might be adopted and of the institutions used to build the nation, major differences arose. Likewise, as the dramatic differences between the cosmopolitanism of the exiles in the 1820s ¹¹ Gioberti, Prolegomeni del Primato, ii, pp. 112–13. ¹² In his Books of the Polish Nation and of the Polish Pilgrims (1832), a work Gioberti must have been familiar with, Mickiewicz sought to warn the Polish exiles against the risks of being seduced by foreign influences (see English edition in A. Mickiewicz, Poems, ed. G. Noyes [New York, 1944], pp. 405–6.). On Mickiewicz, see L. Kramer, Threshold of a New World: Intellectuals and the Exile Experience in Paris, 1830–1848 (Ithaca and London, 1988), pp. 198–233. ¹³ A. M. Banti, La nazione del Risorgimento: Parentela, santità e onore alle origini dell’Italia unità ( Turin, 2000); S. Patriarca, ‘Indolence and Regeneration: Tropes and Tensions of Risorgimento Patriotism’, American Historical Review, 110 (2005), 380–408.

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and the national chauvinism upheld by Gioberti demonstrate, the ways in which they viewed external influences were by no means uniform. On this issue, so crucial to the definition of a national community, the different generations of Italian exiles could not agree. E X I L E A N D T H E R I S O RG I M E N TO One of my contentions in this book has been that the generation of patriots involved in the revolutions first in Italy and then outside Italy evolved a liberal ideology informed by the most advanced international intellectual and political developments. As I have highlighted at several points in my exposition, the main features of exile liberalism and patriotism do not square with the conventional and still dominant interpretation of Risorgimento liberalism as backward, antirevolutionary, wary of individualism and modern constitutionalism, and hostile to progressive European thought. Such an interpretation may well be valid for most members of Italy’s educated classes, but a complete assessment of Italian liberalism in the period would have to further explore the reception of European ideas in contemporary Italian thought, a task which is beyond the scope of the present study. However, as an integral part of international exchanges of ideas, I have described exile liberalism in terms of divergences from and convergences with other contemporary varieties, rather than as an exception to a supposed FrancoBritish ideal-type. The liberalism developed in the Mediterranean both endorsed and opposed British and French liberal ideas, but in neither case should it be seen as ‘backward’ or inadequate. Far from being provincial and insular, it engaged with all the most important contemporary European and transatlantic debates. As I hope I have demonstrated, exile liberalism displayed strong affinities with the liberalism developed in Mexico, Greece, France, and Spain in the same period; indeed, it shared with its European and American counterparts a fundamental set of beliefs. Firstly it was inextricably intertwined with constitutionalism, and with an updated, industrialist version of Condorcet’s idea of progress and civilization. Secondly, it was a socially conservative ideology, in that it sought to restrict political rights to a small section of the population, with even its most progressive versions thus rejecting in toto the idea of democracy. Finally, it advanced individual rights and freedoms, and linked them to the federal cause. The more moderate strand of exile liberalism also displayed substantial ideological affinities with philosophical Whiggism and with the French doctrinaires, as embodied in its defence of the interests and political hegemony of the elites and their representation as separate bodies in representative institutions, without however rejecting the rise of the middle classes, economic individualism, and commercial values. Like other strands of European republicanism and liberalism, exile liberalism almost invariably promoted the development of civic virtues in order to strengthen and preserve the fabric of the nation, and to prevent abuses

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of power. The exiles’ emphasis on civic virtues may well again also be due to the revolutionary nature of Italian liberalism, since an appeal to civic virtues is justified by the need to attract people to a new political enterprise and to the process of nation-building, and in fact reference to civic virtues became a feature of Risorgimento discourse which can be detected both in the political language of Mazzini and his followers on the one hand, and in the writings of the moderates on the other.¹⁴ However, a quasi- republican endorsement of active citizenship was by no means a peculiarity of Italian liberalism. A consistent preoccupation with active citizenship, understood not as direct participation according to the ancient model, but nonetheless as a commitment to the patria’s well-being, a dedication to the national institutions and a participation in public life as a means to protect liberty, continued to be primary concerns of liberals both in England and France.¹⁵ Finally, exile liberalism can be defined as Romantic for a number of reasons. Like the liberalism of Lafayette and Constant, it was Romantic in its belief that political engagement, sacrifice and enthusiasm were a necessary part of a healthy emotional life, and a guarantee against despotism or radical extremism. It remained loyal to the revolutionary tradition in basing its defence of individual rights on natural rights rather than on the principle of utility.¹⁶ It was also Romantic in its combination of the pursuit of heroic individualism as the unrestrained affirmation of the self, and the search for a social order based on the protection of rights and the rule of law.¹⁷ In this respect, the different models of philhellenism advanced by Palma, concerned with constitutional freedoms and state-building, and by Santarosa, motivated by a search for heroic self-fulfilment, well encapsulate the various facets of the exiles’ Romantic liberalism. Indeed, the exiles’ liberalism, like that of the Latin American, Spanish, and Greek patriots belonging to the same international networks, was profoundly influenced by the revolutionary contexts in which it had been forged, so that for these liberals the creation of independent nations and the nationalization of ¹⁴ Whereas Mazzini’s programme required the permanent exercise of civic virtues, in many cases the moderates confined their exercise to the struggle for emancipation. On this aspect of Risorgimento political culture, which would repay a detailed study, see M. Viroli, For Love of Country: An Essay on Patriotism and Nationalism (Oxford, 1995); on the moderates, R. Romani, ‘L’economia politica dei moderati, 1830–1848’, Società e Storia, 29 (2006), 21–49. ¹⁵ H. Rosenblatt, ‘Re-evaluating Benjamin Constant’s liberalism: industrialism, Saint-Simonianism and the Restoration years’, History of European Ideas, 30 (2004), 23–37; J. W. Burrow, Whigs and Liberals: Continuity and Change in English Political Thought (Oxford, 1988); E. Biagini, ‘Neo-Roman Liberalism: ‘‘Republican’’ values and British Liberalism, ca.1860–1875’, History of European Ideas, 29 (2003), 55–72. ¹⁶ L. Kramer, Lafayette in Two Worlds: Public Cultures and Personal Identities in an Age of Revolutions (Chapel Hill, NC, and London, 1996), pp. 81–7.; K. S. Vincent, ‘Benjamin Constant, the French Revolution, and the Origins of French Romantic Liberalism’, French Historical Studies, 25 (2000), 607–37. ¹⁷ On Romantic liberalism see also N. Rosenblum, Another Liberalism: Romanticism and the Reconstruction of the Liberal Thought (Cambridge, MA, 1987), esp. pp. 9–56.

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the masses were overriding priorities. They therefore did not dismiss the French revolutionary tradition, but rather continued to draw on it more faithfully than their continental counterparts. Hence the fascination these liberals felt for heroic figures capable of leading a nation though a revolution. Hence, too, the readiness of almost all of them to accept the French revolutionary institution of the temporary dictatorship, their mistrust of political parties in a revolutionary context, and their willingness to surrender liberal freedoms such as the freedom of the press as exceptional measures in times of war. The revolutionary background to exile liberalism may also account for its markedly utopian strain, apparent in the conviction that freedom would liberate the energies of the countries emancipated and lead to the attainment of unparalleled degrees of progress, happiness, and economic well-being. As the stark opposition between Napoleonic and aristocratic liberalism was in fact overcome in the years after the 1821 revolutions, a measure of agreement was reached among exiles of different social and political backgrounds as to the importance of the Napoleonic experience—once again construed as a legacy of an intrinsically revolutionary liberalism—and of the debt that the national idea owed to that period. The ‘Napoleonic’ heritage was thus absorbed and became part of the liberal ideology of an entire generation. Indeed, the Italian exiles recognized that Napoleonic institutions, from the administrative structures to educational institutions and the army, were key both to building the nation and to promoting liberalism. At the same time, they could no longer be satisfied with Napoleonic ‘liberalism’ from above, as they all considered freedom of speech, representative institutions, and active citizenship to be preconditions for any fully realized liberal order. Moreover, the majority of them were in favour of administrative decentralization to reform the Napoleonic state, and considered both federalism and local autonomies as central to their liberalism. In its emphasis on nationalization as precondition to the consolidation of the institutions and the politicization of the masses, exile liberalism can be seen as a precursor of the liberalism of the governing elites of liberal Italy, who remained concerned with this process until the end of the century. At the same time, given their emphasis on decentralization, the exiles would surely have deplored the attitudes of the Piedmontese destra storica whose leaders, when unifying the peninsula in 1860, gave precedence to the interests of central government over local autonomy, and opted for the Napoleonic model of a centralized state.¹⁸ However, I do not wish to deny that Italian liberalism showed some peculiarities which made it distinctive and different from other European forms of the same doctrine. As the contrast between Italian volunteers and English Benthamites ¹⁸ F. Cammarano, ‘The Nationalization of Politics and the Politicization of the Nation in Liberal Italy’, in R. Lumley and J. Morris (eds), The New History of the Italian South: The Mezzogiorno Revisited (Exeter, 1997), pp. 148–55; on the policies of the Piedmontese liberals in 1860 see L. Riall, Sicily and the Unification of Italy (Oxford, 1998), pp. 138–57.

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shows, the exiles might well entertain a vision of the nation’s emancipation as the primary vehicle of civilization and freedom that was at odds with the imperial liberalism of the English philhellenes. While sharing with French doctrinaires a similar conception of English freedom and a wholly compatible understanding of the social and historical foundations of constitutional orders, the Anglophile exiles were hostile to the French doctrinaires’ repudiation of the revolutionary legacy. A striking feature of Italian liberalism as developed after 1821 by the exiles was the unstinting effort by Italian patriots abroad (but one matched also by similar attempts at home by journalists and thinkers), to integrate the legacy of the Italian Enlightenment into the mainstream of European liberalism, so that Pietro Verri and Gaetano Filangieri would have as much right as Adam Smith and Benjamin Constant to be revered as its founding fathers. Yet these peculiarities did not make their culture more archaic. Likewise the traditional view of the exiles’ abstractness in their slavish imitation of foreign models is equally misleading, and needs at least to be partially revised. The way in which foreign ideas and trends were combined with national and regional traditions, and external models assessed, demonstrates that the political culture of the Risorgimento conceived in exile sometimes recycled, sometimes revised international ideas, and most of the time, if not always, adapted them in an original fashion to the purposes and goals of the exiles’ programme. What made the exiles’ programme abstract and their expectations utopian was thus not its content, but rather the distance between the reality of Italy’s social conditions and their expectations, and the difficulty, if not impossibility, of conceiving concrete proposals that might win popular support and still meet the standards of contemporary European liberalism. The exiles were intensely aware of the distance between elites and masses, and remained suspicious of the latter, being all too aware, by dint of bitter experience in Spain, Latin America, and Greece, of their hostility towards revolutions. With very few exceptions, their programme did not include social measures and, crucially, any reference to the ownership of the land, and they continued to think that the militarization of society combined with education would turn the people into a nation. After all, France and England were living examples of countries in which a high degree of civic spirit and patriotism had been attained, while popular unrest was kept at bay or channelled into legal forms of political participation or protest. Popular education was the recipe that the elites both in France and Britain proposed to use in order to control and educate the masses, and the Italian Romantics wished to apply this model to Italy. Moreover, this generation of patriots was not unique in this regard, for subsequent generations were guilty of the same abstraction and the same neglect. What made Mazzini’s political project more successful was his propaganda methods and the jettisoning of secret societies, not his ability to provide a political platform appealing to rural areas. In the light of the debates expounded in the previous chapters, a final hypothesis on the ways in which such ideas circulated can be suggested. To represent

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Italian patriots as passively ‘colonized’ by northern European ideas, setting the Risorgimento exclusively in a grand narrative of domination and resistance, would be to misconstrue the way in which Italian patriots constructed their national consciousness. As my account of the exchanges taking place in England has shown, the Italian exiles borrowed from the English as much as they retained from their own intellectual tradition. Furthermore, the intellectual dynamics triggered by exile were not confined to the influences that the cultural elites of European metropolitan centres exerted on the Italians, or even on Latin American patriots. Transnational networks among peripheral intellectual communities who were busy constructing their national identities at the end of the Napoleonic era, such as the Latin American, Italian, and Greek patriots, were just as important. Intellectuals ‘at the margins’ did talk to each other. These exchanges increased the intellectual affinities between liberal elites in countries experimenting with emancipation, and helped to bridge different cultural traditions and to foster cosmopolitan notions of civilization and freedom. At the very moment when national communities were being conceived, such exchanges gave impetus to the formation of common denominators in national discourses whose internal dynamics were similar. At the dawn of the era of nationalism, transnational networks of liberals and republicans facilitated the transfer of anti-despotic and republican discourses and led to the formation of separate identities which were conceived not as aggressive and incompatible entities, but rather as building blocks towards the gradual but ultimately universal expansion of freedom. Even the models of nationhood of later exiles like Gioberti, so dismissive of foreign influences, cannot be understood if we ignore the impact that other European movements like French Catholic liberalism and Polish nationalism had on him. Once resituated within the debates from which it originated, the Risorgimento no longer seems to be a failed opportunity to meet the challenges of intellectual modernity or an intellectual project exclusively resulting from the adoption of ideas and stereotypes forged by northern cultures. Rather, it appears to be a local variant of interconnected European and transatlantic intellectual currents that developed in a multiplicity of centres, and one which was produced through a variety of intellectual exchanges, often facilitated by the cultural mediation of the exiles.

Biographical Appendix Besides the specific publications quoted at the end of each individual biography, the following works have been consulted: M. Rosi, Dizionario del Risorgimento Nazionale, 4 vols (Milan, 1930–7) M. Battistini, Esuli italiani in Belgio (1815–1861) (Florence, 1968) S. Carbone, I rifugiati italiani in Francia (1815–1830) (Rome, 1962) Dizionario biografico degli italiani (Rome, 1960–)

Aceto, Giovanni (Nicosia, 1778—Palermo, 1840) From an ancient aristocratic family, Aceto was among the most enthusiastic supporters of the 1812 Sicilian constitution, and of the English presence in Sicily. In 1820 he was with the revolutionaries in their defence of Sicilian autonomy. In 1823 he was forced to flee Sicily and to move to France, where he lived for most of his life, returning only at the very end to Palermo. In exile he continued to defend Sicily’s right to autonomy and the 1812 constitution against the critical remarks of Carlo Botta.

Albera, Vitale (Milan, 1799—1857) Vitale Albera studied law at the University of Pavia. In 1821 he was among the Lombard volunteers who supported the Piedmontese revolution. Expelled from Geneva in 1823, he moved to Brussels, where he wrote about current conditions in Europe. He was in frequent contact with many of the exiles in London, among them Giuseppe Pecchio, Luigi Angeloni, Filippo De Meester, and Francesco Tadini. In 1832 he was one of the main promoters of Giovine Italia in Lombardy, and was among those members of Mazzini’s organization to be tried by the Austrian police after escaping abroad (R. Barbiera, Passioni del Risorgimento [Milan, 1903], pp. 266–70; Archivio Storico del Comune, Milan, Rubrica del Ruolo Generale di Popolazione, 1811 and 1835).

Angeloni, Luigi (Frosinone, 1759—London, 1842) Angeloni’s political ideas owed much to his participation in the Roman Republic between 1798 and 1799, during which he was appointed a Tribuno. He soon

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became fiercely hostile to Napoleon. Exiled to Paris from the fall of the Roman Republic to 1823, he contributed with Buonarroti to the organization of the Philadelphes secret society, and became one of the leaders of the Italian exile community. He remained loyal to his early Jacobin ideals until the end of his life. In France and England, where he lived from 1823 until his death in 1842, Angeloni made a living teaching Italian, wrote extensively on the future of Italy and about literary matters, but became increasingly marginalized because of his political views and irascible character.

Anichini, Pompeo (Pisa, 1782—London, 1850?) A Tuscan patrician, Anichini worked for the Napoleonic regime but always remained a committed republican. Having been excommunicated by the Catholic Church for the anticlerical nature of some of his writings at the beginning of the Restoration, he decided to leave Tuscany. After travelling to Sicily, Spain and Portugal, he settled in England, where he wrote about religious tolerance and divorce, entered the Anglican Church and married an English Anglican. In London he became a friend of Lord Dudley Stuart and William Roscoe, and forged links with Mazzini and the Belgian revolutionary Louis de Potter (T. Whitaker, Sicily and England: Political and Social Reminiscences 1848–1870 [London, 1907], pp. 56–9, 63–6; M. Battistini, ‘Livornesi amici di Luigi de Potter’, Bollettino Storico Livornese, 1 [1937], 62–72).

Arrivabene, Giovanni (Mantua, 1787—1881) Involved in Carbonari plots with the Milanese liberal leadership, in 1822 he left Mantua for Switzerland, and then resided in England until 1826. In London he read deeply on political economy, studied the English poor-relief systems and at the Political Economy Club met Thomas Tooke, Ramsay McCulloch and James Mill. In 1826 Arrivabene moved to Paris, where he attended Jean-Baptiste Say’s lectures. In 1833 his friend William Nassau Senior, consulted by the French government, judged Arrivabene the man best qualified to replace Say and to be appointed to the chair of political economy in Paris.¹ Upon leaving England he settled in Brussels, where the exile community was led by the charismatic figure of Marchioness Costanza Visconti Arconati. After obtaining Belgian citizenship, he attended to emigration and labourers’ welfare for the government, and in 1846 tried to set up a customs treaty between Belgium and France. Towards the end of his long life he returned to Turin, being appointed Senator in 1860 and became First President of the Società di Economia Politica. ¹ Senior to Arrivabene, 29 Jan. 1833, unpublished letter, Nassau Senior papers, C010, National Library of Wales.

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Asinari di San Marzano, Carlo Emanuele (Turin, 1791—1851) Asinari began his military career under Napoleon. After 1815 he remained in the Piedmontese army and was appointed equerry to the King of Sardinia. In 1821 he played a part in the military occupation of the citadel of Alessandria, declared the constitution in Vercelli, and was promoted Colonel by Santarosa. He was condemned to death for his participation in the revolution. Between 1823 and 1830 he resided by turns in France and in England; during the next five years he was in Geneva. After 1840 he was able to settle in Piedmont.

Beltrami, Giacomo Costantino (Bergamo, 1779—Filottrano, 1855) Having been a soldier in the Napoleonic army Beltrami began his career in Napoleon’s administration, which culminated in his appointment as Judge at the Court of the Department of Misone in 1809. After the Restoration, suspected by the authorities of involvement in various secret societies, he decided to go into voluntary exile and left Italy in 1821. He travelled extensively, first in France, Germany, and England, then to the Americas. During his exploration of 1823 he claimed to have discovered the source of the Mississippi River. In 1824 he travelled to Mexico, where he met the leading politicians of the newly established republic and collected Aztec objects and botanical samples. His experience as traveller and his political ideas were recorded in his A Pilgrimage in Europe and America, published in 1828 (L. Grassia, Un italiano fra Napoleone e i Sioux: Giacomo Costantino Beltrami il patriota, lo scopritore, il letterato [Rome, 2002]).

Beolchi, Carlo (Arona, 1796—Turin, 1867) A lawyer by training, Beolchi was involved in the March 1821 insurrection in Turin that led to the establishment of the constitutional regime. After a death sentence, he left Piedmont for Spain, where he fought against the French army as a volunteer, and afterwards moved to England. In London he taught Italian literature at Queen’s College, London, published on Italian poetry and produced an anthology of Italian writers. In 1850 he returned to Turin, where he became deputy in the Parliament between 1857 and 1860.

Bianco di Saint-Jorioz, Carlo Angelo Count of (Barge-Cuneo, 1795—Brussels 1843) Bianco was one of the leaders of the 1821 revolution in Alessandria (Piedmont), and a supporter of the Spanish constitution. He then moved to Spain, where

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he joined the General Staff of Rafael Riego and in Catalonia fought several battles against the French army. With the defeat of the Constitutional regime, he moved to Malta, where in 1830 he wrote Della Guerra nazionale d’insurrezione per bande, the most influential military treatise of the Risorgimento. Also in that year he moved to Paris, and in 1831 he founded the ‘Apofasimeni’ secret society. After being involved in failed revolutionary plots in Savoy and Corsica, he moved to Marseilles, where he met Mazzini and joined Giovine Italia. One of the founding members of Giovine Europa, in 1834 Bianco left Switzerland and moved to Brussels, where he lived with his family. He committed suicide in 1843.

Botta, Carlo, (San Giorgio Canavese, 1766—Paris, 1837) Botta studied medicine at the University of Turin, and in 1796 became a military doctor for the French Army. He participated fully in the political life of the Piedmontese republic, and was accorded special responsibilities for public instruction. After a brief spell in France, he returned to Piedmont to continue his political activities in the domain of education. In 1802 he was back in Paris as member of the French Legislative Body. His Storia della guerra d’indipendenza degli Stati Uniti d’America (1809), written in Paris and translated into French and English, became an international bestseller. With his influential Storia d’Italia dal 1789 al 1814 (1824), and his Storia d’Italia continuata da quella del Guicciardini sino al 1789 (1832) Botta moved away from his earlier democratic ideal to become not only increasingly critical of Napoleon, but nostalgic for the political systems of pre-revolutionary Italy, which he deemed to be better suited to the mores and history of the peninsula than foreign revolutionary models. Between 1817 and 1819 he was appointed Chancellor of the University of Nancy, and in 1833 became a member of the French Académie des Sciences.

Collegno, Giacinto Ottavio Provana di (Turin, 1794—Baveno, 1856) Collegno came from a prominent Piedmontese aristocratic family. After studying at the Military Academy of Saint Cyr, he fought as officer in the French army in Russia in 1812, and the following year in Dresden and Leipzig, where he earned a Légion d’honneur. Having joined the Carboneria, in 1821 he was among the main organizers of the revolution. After travelling in Switzerland, France, and England, in 1822 he unsuccessfully tried to negotiate an alliance with Portugal on behalf of the Spanish constitutional government. In 1824 he was among the Italian volunteers in Greece with Santarosa. In the following years he lived in Belgium, Switzerland, and France. He acquired considerable fame as a geologist


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and taught first at Bordeaux, and from 1845 at the University of Florence. In 1848, under the new constitution, he went back to Piedmont to become Senator, and one of the most prominent members of the Piemontese liberal moderate elite.

Crivelli, Giuseppe (Casale, 1779—?) A medical doctor and a fervent admirer of Napoleon, in 1814 he tried to approach the former emperor at Elba with some military and administrative proposals for the occupation of the Island of Pianosa. During the 1821 revolution in Piedmont he published the Sentinella subalpina. Afterwards he fought in Spain, where he took part in the defence of Madrid. In 1827 in Brussels he published his Pensées politiques et considérations sur les institutions de l’empire français. In 1840 he moved to London and later to Jamaica. He went back to Piedmont in 1849.

Dal Pozzo di Castellino e San Vincenzo, Ferdinando (Moncalvo, Asti, 1768—Turin, 1843) One of the leaders of the Piedmontese revolution, Dal Pozzo was Minister for Home Affairs in the short-lived liberal government of 1821, when he strove to act as intermediary between the king, the moderates and the democratic revolutionaries. A former Maître de Requêtes to the Council of State and President of the Napoleonic Court of Appeal of Genoa, he had become an advocate of both legal and political reform with the return of the Savoy dynasty to Turin, where he had won the respect of both the liberals and the monarch because of his judicial and legal competence. In the 1820s his reputation among the Italian patriots had not yet been damaged by his later views on the desirability of Austrian rule in Italy, and his call for the Italian liberals to back an Austrian government committed to gradual reform. This opinion, voiced in his Della felicità che gl’Italiani possono e debbono dal governo austriaco procurarsi published in Paris in 1833, caused an uproar among the political e´migrés and soon made him an outcast in the liberal circles of the exile community.

De Meester Hüyoel, Giacomo Filippo (Milan, 1765—Lugano, 1852) De Meester was among the most enthusiastic supporters of the Repubblica Cisalpina in Milan. He was at the head of a legion of the National Guard, which he was deputed to reorganize. In 1811 he was made Baron by Napoleon,

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but he never gave up his republican beliefs and, like other democrats, joined Masonic lodges and other secret societies. In 1814 he advocated the creation of an independent Italian state, and in 1821 was involved in the conspiracies of the Romantic leadership in Milan. After a spell in Geneva, he went into exile in England where he lived until 1833, and was on intimate terms with Foscolo. After 1833 he was in Paris. He remained a republican, but agreed to leave the political future of Italy open to avoid conflicts with the more moderate wing of the Italian political emigration. In 1848, however, he was hostile to the decision to annex Lombardy to Piedmont, precisely because it would damage the republican cause. He spent the last years of his life in Lugano.

Foscolo, Ugo (Zante, 1778—London, 1827) Foscolo was educated first in Split and then in Venice, where the family moved after his father’s death. He displayed a precocious talent and passion for poetry. Foscolo welcomed the arrival of Bonapartes’s army in Italy as the incarnation of the principles of the French Revolution, and participated fully in the political life of the municipality of Venice. Once the young general had signed the Treaty of Campoformio, in October 1797, which marked the end of the independence of Venice and the beginning of Austrian rule, Foscolo felt betrayed, and moved to Milan and Bologna, where he wrote for the revolutionary press. In 1799 he joined the army as a volunteer, and saw combat several times in the following months. His novel, the Ultime Lettere di Jacopo Ortis, first published in 1798 then republished in revised versions in 1802 and 1817, reflected the political aspirations and the Romantic mood of that generation of patriots and became the most popular novel in the Risorgimento. Given his increasing public reputation as a man of letters, in 1808 he was appointed to the Chair of Eloquence at the University of Pavia. However, in 1811 the implicit condemnation of the Napoleonic regime evident in his tragedy Ajace alienated the authorities, and he left Lombardy for Venice and Florence. In 1814 Foscolo was among the military officers who hoped to save the kingdom of Italy with the support of the Viceroy Eugène de Beauharnais. On the arrival of the Austrians, and in spite of an offer to edit a literary journal, Foscolo preferred to leave Italy. After a spell in Switzerland he settled in England, where he was to spend the rest of his life. By then, he had won great fame as a poet. In London he wrote extensively in the press about Italian history and literature, and became an obligatory point of reference for most of the other Italian and Greek exiles, though he fell out with nearly all of them. He also became well acquainted with the most important aristocratic and literary circles, and in particular with Lord Holland and John Cam Hobhouse, and with men of letters like Charles MacFarlane and William Stewart Rose.


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Galli, Fiorenzo (Carrù, 1802—?) A military officer, Galli took part in the 1821 revolution in Piedmont, after which he fled to Spain, where he fought for the Constitutional government. In 1823 he published in Barcelona with other exiles the Romantic review El Europeo. He spent a few years in Mexico, where he wrote for El Iris, and then moved to England, where he wrote about philology. His memoirs on the war in Catalonia, published in 1828 in Paris, provided a graphic account of those events, and of the involvement of the Italian volunteers. After 1833, stricken by mental illness, he obtained permission to go back to Piedmont, where he died.

Grassi, Alfio (Acireale, 1766—Paris, 1827) Alfio Grassi started his military career under the Bourbons, but in 1796 he was forced to abandon it and was condemned to death for his revolutionary ideals. In 1799 he joined the Neapolitan Republican Army, and with the fall of the republic he fled to France. Under Napoleon he took part in the Peninsular War, and later fought in Germany, where his loyal service earned him the Légion d’honneur. In 1825 in Paris he published an Extrait historique sur la milice romaine. In 1824 he travelled around the Mediterranean to Constantinople, and wrote in defence of the institutions of the Ottoman Empire. Though staunch in his support of Greek patriotism, he attacked the imperial ambitions of England and Russia in the region.

Linati, Claudio (Parma, 1790—Tampico, Mexico, 1832) The son of Count Filippo Linati, Claudio fought as a Napoleonic officer in Germany, Silesia, and Poland. After 1818 and a spell in Barcelona, where he got married, he returned to Parma, joined the Carboneria and established contact with secret societies throughout Italy. In 1821 he fled Parma and joined the liberal army in Catalonia, where he was a member of General Mina’s General Staff and organized his own group of volunteers. Arrested by the French army in Spain in 1823, and condemned to death as a revolutionary in Parma, Linati fled to Brussels and then left Europe for Mexico. Here he opened a printing shop and founded a periodical that actively supported the radical wing of the liberal party. In 1826 he was back in Europe, where he published a collection of engravings representing the Mexican nation, and published political commentaries in the Belgian press. In 1830–1 he became actively involved in international revolutionary plots, including an attempt to foment an uprising in Spain. Disappointed with the outcome of the revolutions in Europe, in 1832 Linati moved back to Mexico. He died shortly afterwards.

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Marochetti, Giovanni Battista [also known as GianBattista] (Biella, 1772—1851) A lawyer by training, Marochetti was an enthusiastic supporter of revolutionary ideals between 1797 and 1798, and became increasingly hostile to Napoleon in the following years. Between 1818 and 1821 he joined various secret societies and became the leader of the 1821 revolution in Biella, Piedmont, where he organized a national guard. After the revolution he lived in France and wrote to promote the independence of Italy. He was one of the first Italian patriots to suggest that eastern expansion of the Habsburg Empire might favour the creation of an Italian state. In 1836 he joined the Spanish liberal troops against the Carlist army, and later moved to Marseilles. In 1842 he returned to Piedmont.

Monteggia, Luigi (Milan, 1797—?) Luigi Monteggia was one of five sons of the famous Milanese doctor Giovan Battista Monteggia. Following his involvement in the 1821 conspiracies in Lombardy, he fled to Spain. In Barcelona he was one of the founders of El Europeo, which disseminated the ideas of Lombard Romanticism in Spain. In 1822 in Gerona, Spain, he published the Cantata Patriotica, and in 1834 in Marseilles a Grammaire élémentaire de la langue italienne. In 1838 he returned back home. (E. Caldera, Primi manifesti del romanticismo spagnolo [Pisa, 1962]).

Paladini, Guglielmo (Lecce?—Paris, 1857) A lawyer and a Jacobin in 1799, Paladini took part in the 1820 revolution in Naples, during which he belonged to the radical wing of the Carboneria. He was arrested and accused of plotting against the Royal Family in the eponymous ‘Congiura Paladini’. After a spell in Spain, he moved to England, where he wrote about constitutional matters, and then settled in Paris, where he died. (M. Themelly [ed.], ‘Introduzione’ to L. Minichini, Luglio 1820: Cronaca di una rivoluzione [Rome, 1979], pp. vii–lxvi).

Palma di Cesnola, Alerino, Count (Ivrea, 1776—Sira, Greece, 1851) In 1798 Palma di Cesnola was minister of the Committee of Justice for the Provisional Government in Piedmont, and served as a Napoleonic Prefect at Ivrea in 1802. A member of the Federati secret society, Palma led the


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rebellion of Ivrea during the revolution of 1821, and rallied to the Spanish Constitution. In 1822 he was condemned to death by the Piedmontese government. He fought in Spain with other Italian officers before settling in England in 1823, where he was involved in the activities of the London Greek Committee. He later lived in Marseilles, Paris, and Antwerp, before settling in Greece, where he died. In 1840 he agreed to preside over the Commercial Tribunal of Sira, and later to become Magistrate in Athens at the Court of Appeal. He represented the Greek government in several diplomatic negotiations.

Pananti, Filippo (Ronta, Florence, 1766—1857) Filippo studied law at the University of Pisa. In 1799 he joined the Società Patriottica in Florence, and with the departure of the French troops he went to France, where he taught mathematics and literature, and then moved to England, where in 1808 he wrote his most important work, the Poeta di Teatro. In London he succeeded Lorenzo Da Ponte as Poet at the Royal Italian Theatre, a post he would hold until 1814. In 1813 he travelled in the Mediterranean where he was captured by Barbary pirates and taken to Algiers as a prisoner. He was freed thanks to the intervention of the British Consul. Between 1818 and 1819 he travelled again to England, Belgium, and Germany.

Panizzi, Antonio (Brescello, Reggio Emilia, 1797—London, 1879) Antonio Panizzi graduated in law in Parma and soon after joined secret societies. To avoid arrest, in 1823 he fled to Switzerland, settling later in England. He became a British citizen in 1832. Until 1826 he earned a living as a teacher in Liverpool, where he forged a friendship with William Roscoe. Through the patronage of Henry Brougham in 1828 he was appointed Professor of Italian Literature at the newly founded University of London. Soon after he joined the British Museum Library, where he was to spend the rest of his professional life reorganizing its administration and building up its collections. He became Chief Librarian in 1856. In England he published in the press on the Italian question, and produced an edition of Boiardo’s works. For his services he was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1869. He was acquainted with many prominent British politicians, including Lord Palmerston and Gladstone, and regularly acted as an informal intermediary between Italian patriots and English governments to help in settling the ‘Italian question’. (M. Wicks, The Italian Exiles in London 1816–1848 [Manchester, 1937]).

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Pecchio, Giuseppe (Milan, 1785—Brighton, 1835) Giuseppe Pecchio was the son of an ancient Milanese patrician family. After graduating in law at the University of Pavia, he joined the financial administration of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy, and became Assistant to the Council of State for home and financial affairs in 1808. Around 1818 Pecchio became a member of the liberal circle of Count Federico Confalonieri, helped him to establish Lancasterian schools in Lombardy and to organize the Federati secret society. He wrote most of the economic articles in the Il Conciliatore. In 1821 he was one of the main organizers of the anti-Austrian conspiracy in Milan, and during the revolution in Piedmont he acted as intermediary between the Lombard and Piedmontese revolutionaries. In 1822 he was in Spain and Portugal, where he helped to found secret societies with Guglielmo Pepe and other exiles. In 1823 he settled for good in England, and became the best-known and most respected exile, on intimate terms with the Holland House Circle and the Edinburgh Reviewers alike. He did much to bring the Italian question to their attention, writing in the Edinburgh Review and in other periodicals. In 1825 he travelled to Greece on behalf of the London Greek Committee. He discussed his first-hand experience of the revolutions in Spain, Portugal, and Greece in several short pamphlets that circulated widely in Europe and were translated into a number of different languages, and commended the English constitution and economic model to continental audiences with his Un’elezione di membri del parlamento in Inghilterra (1826) and Osservazioni semi-serie di un esule sull’Inghilterra (1831). His Storia delle’economia pubblica in Italia (1829) did much to popularize Italian economic thought in Europe. Before marrying a well-to-do English lady in 1828, he taught Italian language and literature in Nottingham and York (P. Bernardelli, ‘Prefazione’, to Pecchio, SP, pp. vii–xcv).

Pepe, Guglielmo (Squillace, 1783—Turin, 1855) In 1799 Pepe left the Royal Military College of Naples to join the National Guard of the newly formed Neapolitan Republic. At its collapse he was exiled to France, but returned to Naples to plot against the king and was imprisoned for three years. On the arrival of Joseph Bonaparte he was made an officer and then rose through the ranks under Murat. After the Restoration, he continued to serve in the army. In 1821 he was among the main promoters of the revolution and was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Constitutional Army. After the revolution he was in Spain, where he was among the founders of the Società dei Fratelli Costituzionali Europei, and afterwards in France and England. His contacts with the most prominent liberals of most European countries, including


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Lafayette, English radicals, and Whigs, made him one of the best-connected and known Italian exiles on the continent. In France and England he wrote his memoirs and published extensively on military matters. In 1848 he was involved in the military campaigns against the Austrians in Italy, and in particular in the defence of Venice. He spent the last years of his life in Turin (G. Pepe, Memoirs: Comprising the Principal Military and Political Events of Modern Italy, 3 vols [London, 1846]).

Pistrucci, Filippo (Bologna, 1782—London, 1859) Filippo Pistrucci was trained early in life as a painter, and soon developed several artistic talents, becoming an improviser of exceptional memory and an illustrator. In the early years of the Restoration he worked in Milan, where in 1819 he published the Iconologia, and produced the engravings for several monumental encyclopedias, like the ten-volume Vite e ritratti d’uomini celebri di tutti i tempi e nazioni. Having joined secret societies, Pistrucci after 1821 left Italy and became famous for his improvisations in the most fashionable salons of Europe. In London he converted to Protestantism, and after 1837 was one of Mazzini’s close collaborators. He became Secretary of the Unione Operai Italiani and helped to run Mazzini’s school for the children of Italian workers. In 1847 he contributed to the Eco di Savonarola, the monthly magazine of the Italian evangelical patriots in England.

Porro Lambertenghi, Luigi (Como, 1780—Milan, 1860) Luigi Porro Lambertenghi was a member of the Napoleonic Legislative Body between 1803 and 1807. He was part of the entourage of the Viceroy Eugène de Beauharnais and was made count by the emperor. After 1815 he became one of the leaders of the Lombard liberal intelligentsia, introduced the first steamboat on the River Po, promoted the publication of Il Conciliatore and joined the ranks of the Carboneria. Before receiving a death sentence for his involvement in the anti-Austrian conspiracies, Porro fled to Switzerland and London, where he lived with Santarosa. In 1824 the London Greek Committee sent him to Greece with funds and ammunition. There he was appointed to several military and administrative positions by the Greek government, including the governorship of Athens. In 1827 he moved to Marseilles, where he spent most of his time until 1840. In that year he returned to Italy and went to Turin. During the 1848 revolution in Milan he was sent by the provisional government to Paris to present its concerns to the French government.

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Prandi, Fortunato (Ceva, 1799—Sale Langhe 1868) Prandi, from a family of small landowners, took part in the 1821 revolution in Piedmont, after which he fled first to France and Spain, before settling in England. In London he became acquainted with Bentham’s circle, and with Foscolo and Mazzini, and attended to the translation of Italian publications into English. He became a friend of the inventor Charles Babbage, whom he accompanied to the Congress of Scientists in Turin in 1840. In the 1840s he rallied to moderate liberalism and translated the works of d’Azeglio into English. He became an expert on railways, and finally moved back to Piedmont where in 1848 he was elected Member of the Parliament (L. Bulferetti, ‘Un amico di Charles Babbage: Fortunato Prandi’, Memorie dell’Istituto Lombardo-Accademia di Scienze e Lettere, 30 [1968], 83–164).

Rossetti, Gabriele (Vasto, 1783—London, 1854) Under Napoleonic rule Rossetti was first poet at the San Carlo Theatre and later at the royal museum of Naples. Rossetti’s involvement in the 1821 revolution in Naples forced him to flee first to Malta, and then to London, where he spent the rest of his life. His eccentric interpretation of Dante’s Commedia, which he saw as a liberal and anticlerical manifesto, gave him a substantial, if not uncontroversial, literary fame in England, where he became acquainted with the most prominent men of letters and politicians. He was deeply influenced by English politics, and came to repudiate Catholicism, becoming an evangelical (E. R. Vincent, Rossetti in England [Oxford, 1936]).

Romeo, Francesco (Melicocca, ?—?) Romeo was arrested twice by the French, in 1809 and 1811, and later served in the British Army as captain in the war against the Napoleonic forces in Calabria, probably acting as a spy. During the English occupation of Sicily, he wrote in defence of the abolition of entails. In the 1820s he was exiled in England, where he lived permanently with the exception of a few months spent in the Low Countries between 1827 and 1828. In 1825 he was briefly in prison in London.² He published a number of pamphlets advocating the creation of an Italian federal state and a constitution along British lines, and to support freedom of the press in India (Romeo, Mirror; Presented to His Sicilian Majesty, Great Britain and the Allied Sovereigns: Reflecting Political Facts of the Utmost Importance, Calculated to Undeceive Them [London, 1822]). ² Romeo to Sir Robert Peel, 23 September 1825, BL, Peel Papers 40381, f.355.


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Rossi, Pellegrino (Carrara, 1787—Rome, 1848) Pellegrino Rossi graduated in law at the University of Bologna in 1806, and soon after became Professor of Penal Law. In 1815 he backed the supporters of Murat’s bid to become King of Italy. With the Restoration he fled to Geneva, where he became one of the most prominent intellectuals along with Sismondi and Dumont, and taught Roman and Penal Law at the university there. Thanks to his Annales de législation et de jurisprudence, he gained a considerable reputation as a jurist in France too, especially among moderate liberals. In 1820 he became a member of the Swiss Federal Council, and was later asked to draft a reform of the federal constitution. In 1833 he held a chair of political economy and the following year of constitutional law in Paris. In 1839 he was made a peer, and in 1845 became Plenipotentiary Minister of France in the Papal States. With the fall of Louis-Philippe, Rossi remained in Rome, where he was appointed minister for finance and home affairs by Pope Pius IX. While keen on liberal reform, he was hostile to any revolutionary solution and to the idea of a Constituent Assembly for the creation of a new Italian republic. In November 1848 he was murdered while on his way to a parliamentary session.

Salfi, Francesco Saverio (Cosenza, 1759—Paris, 1832) Salfi studied with the pupils of the famous Neapolitan philosopher Antonio Genovesi, and started early to write about history, theatre, philosophy, and literature. Accused of plotting against the king, in 1795 he left Naples first for France and then moved to Milan in 1796. He took part in the political and intellectual life of the city, where he supported the foundation of an independent Italian republic, advocated democratic principles and wrote for the theatre. In 1799 he briefly went back to Naples to support the republic, but after its collapse he returned to Milan. Between 1803 and 1809 he taught history and then also international law at Brera. In 1814 he returned to Naples and was among the patriots supporting Murat’s ambition to become King of Italy. Disappointed by his hesitation, he advocated the creation of an independent and constitutional Italian state. Soon after he fled to Paris, where he spent the rest of his life and became acquainted with Fauriel, Mme de Condorcet, Guizot, Tracy, and Lafayette. In Paris he regularly contributed to Marc-Antoine Jullien’s Revue encyclopédique and completed Ginguené’s Histoire littéraire d’Italie. Between 1830 and 1831, along with Lafayette, he was at the centre of transnational conspiracies to foment a revolution in the Italian states (C. Nardi, La vita e le opere di Francesco Saverio Salfi (1759–1832) [Rome, 1925]; R. Froio [ed.], Salfi tra Napoli e Parigi. Carteggio 1792–1832 [Naples, 1997]).

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Santangelo de Attellis, Orazio (Campobasso, 1774—Civitavecchia, 1850) A committed democrat, Santangelo deserted the Bourbon Army that was supporting the Austrian troops against Napoleon in 1796 to go first to Paris and then to join the Grande Armée. In 1804 he was resident in Milan, where he was among the patriots advocating Italian political unity. Afterwards he joined the Gendarmerie of the Kingdom of Naples, where he fought against brigandage, and later took part in the Russian Campaign. A member of the Carboneria since 1811, during the 1820–1 revolution he belonged to the left-wing of the constitutional party hostile to Guglielmo Pepe. With the collapse of the constitutional regime he went to Spain to fight, and then in 1824 he moved to the Americas. Between 1825 and 1826 he was in Mexico where he was close to radical and federal political circles, but was expelled for his involvement in the politics of the new republic. He moved to New York until 1832, when he was back in Mexico, but in 1835 he left again to settle in New Orleans, where he defended the federal cause and supported the secession of Texas. In 1848 he returned to Italy. In spite of his sympathy for the leadership of the Savoy dynasty in the national movement, he volunteered to fight for the defence of Mazzini’s Roman republic (L. G. Rusich, Un carbonaro Molisano nei due mondi [Naples, 1982]).

Santarosa, De Rossi di Pomarolo, Santorre Annibale (Savigliano, Piedmont, 1783—Sfacteria, Greece, 1825) Santorre came from the Piedmontese petty nobility. In 1796 he was in the army with his father in the campaign against the French. Under Napoleon he became mayor of his home town, Savigliano, and between 1812 and 1814 he was Subprefect at La Spezia. His literary and political education, inspired by Alfieri, Foscolo, and Rousseau, owed much to the circle of the Accademia dei Concordi, committed to the revaluation of Italy’s cultural tradition. In 1815 he joined the Piedmontese army, and in 1820 he was a member of the Federati secret society. Santarosa was the main organizer of the revolution in Piedmont, and after the flight of Charles Albert also the leading personality of the short-lived constitutional government. In 1821 he left Piedmont for Switzerland where he wrote his De la révolution piémontaise, and then to France, where he was imprisoned for a couple of months. Between 1822 and 1824 he made a living teaching Italian and French in Nottingham. In 1824 he decided to go to Greece with Giacinto Provana di Collegno as a volunteer to fight against the Ottomans, and he died as a simple private on the island of Sfacteria.

Bibliography P R I M A RY S O U RC E S Archival material Italy Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, Milan Aut.B., XXX Museo del Risorgimento, Milan Fondo Esuli, Carte De Meester Biblioteca Nazionale, Naples, MS V A 47(3) Archivio di Stato, Turin Materie Politiche per rapporto coll’estero, Carte politiche Diverse, 10, Corrispondenze intercettate Affari Interni, Alta Polizia, Materie Politiche USA Cornell University Lafayette Papers, Series III, Correspondence The Hispanic Society of America, New York Torijos papers, Cartas particulares a` D. Ignacio Pinto Houghton Library, Harvard College Library MS Eng 1247.1 France Archives Nationales, Paris F.7, 6654 Greece General State Archives, Athens Mavrokordatos papers, 9b Centre for Neohellenic Research, Athens Orlando and Louriottis Papers Great Britain British Library, London Bentham’s Correspondence, Add. Mss. 33546 Holland House Papers, 51832, 51837 Panizzi’s Correspondence, Add. Mss., 36714 Peel Papers 40381 National Library of Wales, Cardiff Nassau Senior Papers Belgium Visconti-Arconati Archive, Gaasbeek, Belgium

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Index The letter n indicates an endnote. Academy of the Crusca 201 Accademia dei Concordi, Piedmont 11 Aceto, Giovanni 146 n. 169, 231 Addison, Joseph 191 Albania 72 Albera, Vitale 8, 107 Albrizzi, Isabella Teodochi 70 Alfieri, Vittorio 11, 43, 85 Alien Acts 29 Alì Pasha 71, 73 America: as utopian continent 42–3 see also Spanish America and United States of America Amphictyonic Council (ancient Greece) 105 Angeloni, Luigi 231–2 and Bolívar 59 Mazzini on 215 and party politics 128 and sovereignty 136–7, 148 and Vattel 100 Anglican Church: and Ireland 129, 132 see also Protestantism Anglophilia 111–13, 115–17, 146–50, 219–20 see also England Anichini, Pompeo 130, 132, 232 Annali Universali di Statistica 24, 130, 153, 155, 174 anticlericalism 130–1 Antologia (journal) 24, 158 ‘Apofasimeni’ (secret society) 234 Argenson, Marc-René Voyer, Marquis d’ 44 Aribau, Bonaventura Carlos 36 aristocracy and 1820 revolutions in Italy 15–17 English and Italian compared 117–20, 127 exiles’ views on 115–16, 127–8, 134–7, 141, 182–3, 192–3 French liberals’ views on 111–13 and Napoleonic rule 13 and Risorgimento 149 see also notabilato Arrivabene, Giovanni 232 and Belgium 214 and England 114, 182, 183 and political economy, definition of 171, 177, 184 and poverty 171–6

writings Considérations sur les principaux moyens d’améliorer le sort des classes ouvrières 158, 174 Di varie società e instituzioni di beneficenza in Londra 158, 171 Epoch of My Life, An 222 (quoted) Letter on the Management of the Poor in Belgium, A 157 Memoirs 221 Ashurst, William 211 Asinari di San Marzano, Carlo Emanuele 127–8, 233 Attellis, Orazio Santangelo de’ see Santangelo de’ Attellis, Orazio Austin, John and Sarah 114 Austria 203–4, 207, 214 Baczko, Bronislaw 34 Balbo, Cesare 94–5, 149, 216, 219 Balkans 72 Banti, Alberto 3, 83–4, 90, 222 Barante, Prosper de 29, 112 Barucci, Pietro 167 Beauharnais, Eugène de 14, 236 Beccaria, Cesare 49, 164, 166 Belgium 176, 214 see also Brussels Beltrami, Giacomo Costantino 7–8, 233 and England 116, 126, 127 and English national character 121–2 and Mexico 51, 52–3, 55 and Papal States 14 Le Mexique 115–16 Pilgrimage in Europe and America, A 121–2, 126, 233 Bentham, Jeremy Constitutional Code 77 and liberty 26 and London Greek Committee 75 and monarchy 136 and Spanish American emancipation 45–6, 48 Benthamites 81, 114 see also English Radicals Beolchi, Carlo 39, 213–14, 233 Berchet, Giovanni 16–17, 36, 71; I profughi di Parga 74 Biagini, Eugenio 102

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Bianchini, Lodovico 184 Bianco di Saint-Jorioz, Carlo Angelo, Count of 18, 38–9, 233–4 Della Guerra nazionale d’insurrezione per bande 38, 234 Blackwood Magazine 132 Blaquiere, Edward 27, 28, 36, 38–9 and liberalism 81 and philhellenism 75, 76 and Spanish American emancipation 46 and Spanish Revolution 92 Blaufarb, Rafe 44 Bolívar, Simón and Bolivian constitution 46–7 as dictator 50–1 as hero 59, 61, 88 and international law 94 Bolivia 47 Botta, Carlo 234 and federalism 61 on Life of Salvator Rosa (Morgan) 201 Storia della guerra dell’indipendenza degli Stati Uniti 58, 234 Storia d’Italia continuata da quella del Guicciardini sino al 1789 234 Storia d’Italia dal 1786 al 1814 147, 234 Bowring, John 27, 28, 36, 114; and Greece 75, 76, 80–1 Brissot de Warville, Pierre Jacques 42 Britain and Greek independence 75–6, 81–2 and Italian Question 207–8 and reform of the Papal States 207–8 and Parga 71–2 see also Anglophilia; England Brougham, Henry 115, 203, 207 n. 87, 239 Brussels 30 Buonarroti, Filippo in Brussels 30 and Charbonnerie démocratique universelle 95 Conspiration pour l’égalité, dite de Babeuf 24–5 and federalism 50, 61, 104 as radical 3, 4 Burrow, Sir John 74 Bustamante, Anastasio 60 Byron, George Gordon, Lord Childe Harold 79, 194 myth of 79, 85, 88 and philhellenism 66, 74, 75, 78, 79, 85 Calabria 200 Calaresu, Melissa 210 Camera dei Seniori (Italy) 143 Canga Argüellas, José 47 Canning, George 44

Capponi, Pietro 115, 219 Carascosa, Michele 18 Carbonari English perceptions of 203 and federalism 107 and liberalism 34 Mazzini and 30, 215 see also secret societies Carboneria: exported to Spain 22 Carrel, Armand 28, 44, 63, 100–1 Catalonia 36, 39, 40 Catholic Church exiles’ view on influence of in Ireland 129, 130 in Mexico 55 in Spain 38–9 exiles’ campaign against 203–6 and Italian moderates 216 Cattaneo, Carlo 130, 133, 215 caudillos (Spanish America) 58, 60 Cavallotti, Felice 90 Cavour, Camillo and England 219–20; aristocracy 149–50 and Irish question 130, 133 and political economy 185 and Santarosa 218–19 Chalmers, Thomas 169, 172 Charbonnerie (France) 21 Chard, Chloe 189 Chartists 211 Chateaubriand, René de 111 Chenna, Giuseppe 34 cicisbei 119 Cicogna, Count Carlo 118–19 civic virtues: exiles’ views on in commercial societies 153, 161–3, 178–83 in England 115, 117, 125–6, 129 in Greece 77 and liberalism 227, 228 in Mexico 54 see also republicanism: and liberalism civilization: exiles’ views on and empires 98 in Europe 92–3 as global process 96–9 in Greece 84 in Mediterranean region 69 and migration 97 Salfi and 198–9 civil rights 16, 162 Cobden, Richard 219 Cochran, Peter 74 Collegno, Giacinto 80, 218, 234–5 Colley, Linda 127 Colombia 44–5 Comitato per l’emancipazione Italiana 35

Index commercial societies: ideas of 92, 97, 151–85 Comte, Charles 153 Condorcet, Marie Jean Antoine de Caritat, Marquis de 42–3, 99 Confalonieri, Count Federico 117, 195, 204 Congress of Panama (1826) 94 Congress of Vienna (1814–15) 99, 100, 102, 103 Congress system 100, 101 Constant, Benjamin and Bolívar, Simón 47, 59 Commentaire sur l’ouvrage de Filangieri 144 and commerce 92 and English aristocracy 134–5 and exiles 28 and industrialism 178 and liberalism 26, 147 constitution, exiles’ view on English 127–9, 135–7, 142–3 Greek 77 for the Ionian Islands 70–1 Mexican 53 Spanish 17, 33 constitutionalism, Italian (1815–1821) 14–15, 17–18 and exportability of foreign models to Italy, 137–46 and Risorgimento 117 Cook, Ernest 36 cosmopolitanism 95–6, 106–7, 223–5 Cottu, Charles 111 ‘Counts Carbonari’ 66–7 Cousin, Victor 29, 86, 87, 88–9, 218 Cowen, Joseph 211 Creoles, Spanish American 47–8, 49, 53, 94 Criscuolo, Vittorio 50 Crivelli, Giuseppe 235 Cuoco, Vincenzo 10, 138 Custodi, Pietro 156, 165, 166 191–2 Dal Pozzo di Castellino e San Vincenzo, Ferdinando 13, 235 and administrative reform 195 Della felicità che gl’Italiani possono e debbono dal governo austriaco procurarsi 235–6 and England 114, 127 and Irish question 130–3 Dante Alighieri 191, 205–6 d’Azeglio, Massimo 149, 218, 219 de Crèvecoeur, J. Hector Saint-John 42 De Francesco, Antonino 50 del Valle, José Cecilio 48–9, 93–4 De Meester Hüyoel, Giacomo Filippo 235–6 and American federalism 62, 64 and Bentham 136 and commercial society 181

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as revolutionary 214 democracy, idea of and English politics 122–9, 127 Italian Jacobins and 9–10, 12 democratic federalism see federalism: democratic democratic liberalism see liberalism: democratic de Pradt, Dominique 46, 47, 48, 59, 82 n. 90, 94 despotism: exiles’ views on Catholic Church 203 Habsburg Empire 203–4 Romantic liberalism 227 Spain 46 diasporas 6–7, 22, 24–5, 223 dictatorship, ideas of and French Revolution 111, 228 in Greece 76 in international relations 100 and liberalism 49, 50, 56–8 in Mexico 50, 56–8 in Spanish America 61 see also Bolívar, Simón; Linati, Claudio; Napoleon Di Rienzo, Eugenio 99 Di Salvo, Marquis Carlo 27, 79 di Tella, Torcuato 57 doctrinaires (France) 29, 112, 113, 147, 229 Dumont, Etienne 30, 113 Dunoyer, Charles 153 Dupin, Charles 92–3, 153 Durando, Giacomo 217 Duvergier de Hauranne, Prosper 112, 129 Eco di Savonarola (magazine) 241 economics see political economy Economy Club (London) 157, 206 Edinburgh Review exiles and 24 Foscolo and 71, 140 and Ireland 132 McCulloch and 159, 168 and party politics 123 Pecchio and 204, 207, 208 and philosophical Whiggism 114, 115 education: exiles’ views on 54, 81, 195, 229 El Aguila (journal) 57 El Europeo (journal) 36–7, 237, 238 El Iris (journal) 51, 54, 55, 56, 97, 237 El Sol (journal) 57 Emancipation of Italy Fund Committee 211 e´migrés, Spanish 45 see also exiles empires 98 Ottoman Empire 66, 69, 71 Austrian Empire 98, 162–3, 203–4

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Empson, William 114 England exiles’ views on aristocracy 115, 117–20, 127 civic virtues 115, 126, 134, 149, 153, 154, 174 commercial society 151–85 constitution 137–46 Filangieri and 134 exiles’ criticism of 127–8 marriage 119–20 national character and society 117–22 parliamentary elections 125, 126 political freedom and economic prosperity 159–63 political parties 122–9 political shortcomings 134–7 public opinion 126–27 e´migrés in 22, 24, 115–16, 117 as Florentine republic 161, 162 and French liberalism 111–13 and Italian liberalism 220 see also Anglophilia; Britain; London English Radicals 80, 135–6 see also Benthamites Enlightenment America 42–3 commerce 92 international relations 101 Italian 144–5, 165–9, 209, 229 Scottish 114 Espagne, Michel 5, 65 Europe, ideas of balance of power 99–103, 104 and civilization 78, 82, 93 and French leadership 93, 104 and supranational institutions 93, 104–6 European Review 140, 190 Eustace, John Chetwode 189–90 exiles and Anglophilia 118–22, 128–9, 143, 147 and Austria 203–4 and civic virtues 226–7 and civilization 96–8 and cosmopolitanism 92–9, 106–7 and doctrinaires 229 and federalism 44, 49–50, 61–4, 106 and French Revolution of 1830 148 and Giovine Italia 214 historiography of 2 and Irish question 130–4 and Italian constitution 138–47 and liberalism 182–3, 226–30 linguistic abilities of 27 and Mazzini 214–15 mobility of 27

and national consciousness 1, 7, 107, 121, 209–10, 222–6 and patriotism 9, 12, 17, 90–1, 95–6, 107, 226–7 and philhellenism 66–8, 69, 70–1, 72–5, 77, 78–81, 82–4, 85–9 and Protestantism 133–4 and Spain 33–41 and Spanish America 46, 48–9 see also Risorgimento Fabvier, General Charles Nicolas 27 Fauriel, Claude 65–6, 82 federalism 93–4 conservative 49–50, 61 democratic 42–64 exiles’ support for 44, 49–50, 61–4, 71, 104–6, 228 historiography of 49–50 supranational 93, 104–6 Ferrara, Francesco 185 Ferrari, Giuseppe 215, 216 Ferrone, Vincenzo 145 Filangieri, Gaetano 9, 229 and College of the Censors 145 Constant and 144 and English institutions 134 influence of 166 Salfi and 144 Scienza della Legislazione 144–5 Fleming, Kate 73, 196 Florence 162 Foreign Quarterly Review 173 Forsyth, Joseph 192 Foscolo, Ugo 236 and idealization of America 43 and aristocracy 118–20, 147, 192 as conspirator 14 and authorship 202 and Catholic Church 204–5 Cattaneo and 215 and ‘Classical Tours of Italy, The’ (Eustace) 189–94 and England 113, 116, 122, 212, 219 as exile 1, 8, 9 Ferrari and 215 and Forsyth 192–3 and French revolution 9, 148 and international relations 102–3 and Ionian Islands 70–5 and Venetian constitution 139–40 and Mazzini 215 as moderate liberal 29 and Napoleonic rule 12, 190 and national identity 223–4 and patriotism 90 and philhellenism 67, 70–5, 90

Index and political parties 123 and small countries 102 on women: Italian and English compared 119–20, 192–3 writings ‘Antiquarians and Critics’ 190 Discorsi della servitù d’Italia 123 Discorso sul testo della Commedia di Dante 140 Essay on the Present Literature in Italy 193–4 ‘History of the Democratical Constitution of Venice’ 140 ‘Learned Ladies’ 190 Lettere scritte dall’Inghilterra 118 Narrative of the Events of Parga 103 Orazione a Bonaparte 10–11 Stato politico delle isole Jonie 70, 123–4 Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis 11, 68, 236 ‘Women of Italy, The’ 119 France and Anglophilia 111–12 anticlericalism in 130 Charte octroyée 21, 28 as civilizing force 93, 97 e´migrés in 24 and European federal unity 104, 107 liberalism 25, 26, 28–9, 34, 42, 43–4, 56, 111–13 and republican movement 178 Revolution (1830) 148 and revolutionary movement 30 invasion of Spain (1823) 100 see also Paris Franklin, Benjamin 105 n59 freedom and civilization 92–108 negative 161–3, 170, 178 see also civic virtues Freemasons 52, 95 French Revolution: influence of 9, 215, 228 Gaddi, Giacinto 217 Galante Garrone, Alessandro 2, 5–6 Galiffe, Jacques Augustin 193 Galilei, Galileo 201 Galli, Fiorenzo 237 and El Europeo 36 and El Iris 51 and federation system 106 and land reform 55 on Spain 34 Gamba, Count Pietro 67, 76, 79 Garibaldi, Giuseppe 61 Geneva 30, 113 Genovesi, Antonio 9, 160, 161, 164, 166, 201

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Giannone, Pietro 201 Gibbon, Edward 191 Ginsborg, Paul and Banti, Alberto 222 Gioberti, Vincenzo 216, 224, 225, 230 Gioja, Melchiorre 153, 155, 156, 157, 171 Filosofia della Statistica 157 Prospetto delle scienze economiche 166 Gioli, G. 167 Giovine Europa 234 Giovine Italia 40, 63, 214, 234 Goristiza, Emanuel de 47 Gramsci, Antonio 4 Grand Tour 4, 186–94, 209–10 Grassi, Alfio 9, 67, 84–5, 98, 237 Greece civil war (1824) 76 constitution 77 and Mediterranean regeneration 65–91 position between Europe and Asia 68–9, 72–5, 76–82 and republicanism 67, 70, 77 war of independence 66 see also philhellenism Guatemala 48–9 Guerra, Moreno de 37 Guerrero, Vicente 53, 61 guerrilla warfare 33, 38, 40 Guizot, François 29, 112, 120, 147–8 Habsburg Empire see Austria Hallam, Henry 114 Heredia, José María 51 heroism Bolívar and 50–1, 59 and dictatorship 61 memory of exiles and 220 in Greece 66, 79, 85–9, 227 Lafayette and 43 military 42–64, 225 Napoleon and 56 Riego and 58–9, 88 Romantic 58–60, 61 Santa Anna and 59–60 Santarosa and 85, 88–9, 91 Stendhal and 88 Washington and 88 Heß, Gilbert 85 Hilton, Boyd 170 Hobhouse, John Cam 72, 73, 207 n. 87 Holland, Lord Henry 29, 113, 118, 207 Holland House, London 29–30, 113–14, 188 Holy Alliance (1815) 100 Holy Alliance of the Peoples (Mazzini) 103, 106 House of Lords 136, 149 Humboldt, Alexander von 48

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Hume, Joseph 76 Humphreys, William H. 78 Hazareesingh, Sudhir 56 Ibrahim Pasha 66 ideas: circulation of 6, 7, 17, 24, 47, 229, 230 Il Caffè (journal) 119, 160 Il Conciliatore (journal) and idea of civilisation 16, 94 and England 113, 115, 118 Foscolo and 140 and liberalism 16 Morgan, Lady and 195 and Napoleonic rule 15 and political economy 155–6 influence on Spanish Romanticism 36 individualism 178, 227 industrialism 152–3 and civic virtues 153, 154, 161–2, 178 Marochetti and 179 Stendhal and 88 internationalism 34 international order: Kantian understanding of 104–6 intervention: principle of 100 Ionian Islands 70–5 Ipsara (Greece) 76 Ireland 129–34 ‘Italomania’ 186 Italy Britain and 202–12 English views on 186–90 culture and patriotism in 11, 189–94, 198–202 see also primato exiles’ political programmes for 61–2, 107–8, 137–8 and Greece as sister countries 82–5 and liberalism 4, 6, 15–17, 26, 36, 40, 58, 117, 133, 155–6, 159, 160, 163 Napoleon and 10–14 national character of 121–2 Repubblica Italiana 10 Southern Question 209 Triennio Rivoluzionario 83 see also Florence; Kingdom of the Two Sicilies; Lombardy; Naples; Papal States; Piedmont; Sardinia; Turin; Tuscany; Venice Jacobins 9–10, 122–3 Jaume, Lucien 111, 147 Jeffrey, Francis 114 Jesuits 129, 130, 205 Jouffroy, Theodore 93, 104 journalism 202–12 Jullien, Marc-Antoine 28, 97

Kalvos, Andrea 68 Kant, Immanuel 105 Kapodístrias, Count Ioánnis Antónios 71–2 Kingdom of the Two Sicilies 17, 102, 107 Korais, Adamantios 68 Lacaita, James 208 Lafayette, Marquis de 27–8 and emancipation of Colombia 44–5 and counter-intervention 100–1 death of 30, 63 and democratic federalism 44 as hero 43, 88 and liberalism 26 and Società dei Fratelli Costituzionali Europei 34 Lammenais, Félicité de 179 Lansdowne, Henry, 3rd Marquis of 114 Latin America see Spanish America Leask, Nigel 79 Le Globe (newspaper) 24, 87, 88 Lepanto, battle of 84–5 Leroux, Pierre 93 liberal: origin of term 25–6, 32; use of 15–16, 52, 57, 181–2 ‘liberal international’ 21–31, 92–3 liberalism aristocracy and 15–16, 135–7, 111–16, 149 and Catholicism 129–34, 216 Cavour and 218–19 and citizenship 227, 228 and civic virtues 181–3, 226–7 democratic 17, 137, 148, 181 and dictatorship 49, 50, 56–8 economic 182–3, 185 in England 25, 111, 220 and the Italian Enlightenment 42–3, 144–45, 229 Foscolo and 215 in France 25, 26, 28–9, 34, 42, 43–4, 56, 113, 150 and freedom of the press 23, 24, 29, 78, 228 in Geneva 30 in Greece 69, 81 and international relations 108 and the Irish question 129–34 and exile 182, 226–30 Italian historiography of 3–4, 116–17 in Italy 4, 6, 15–17, 26, 29, 36, 40, 58, 117, 133, 155–6, 159, 160, 163 in Mexico 52, 54, 56, 57, 58 moderate 17, 218 Morgan, Lady Sydney and 196, 199 Napoleon and 56 n. 228 origin of 25–6

Index in Piedmont 218 and republicanism 24, 43, 45, 153, 181, 207, 226, 230 and revolution 17, 22, 56–9, 218, 226, 227–8 Risorgimento and 3, 4–5, 146–50 Romantic 227 Santarosa and 218–19 in Spain 25, 32–5, 37, 58 in Spanish America 40–1, 45–9, 47, 50, 60, 61 in the United States 43 transnational movement 24–31, 226, 230 utopian nature of 33–4, 40–1, 43, 60, 228, 229 and Vienna Settlement 22 liberty and aristocracy 137, 148 liberal interpretations of 26 see also freedom Linati, Claudio 9, 237 and commerce 97 death of 214 and dictatorship 56–8 and education 54 and El Iris 51 and empires 98 and federalism 63 and mobility 27 Lombardy Austrian rule as described by the exiles 162–3, 203–4 Lady Morgan’s travels to 194–7 Pecchio and its administrative tradition 143–4 London 29 see also Holland House London Greek Committee 66–7, 75, 76, 77–9, 80 Longo, Alfonso 164 López Soler, Ramón 36 Louriottis, Andrea 75, 82 Macaulay, Thomas Babington 114 Macchioro, Aurelio 222 McCulloch, Ramsay 131 and commercial crises 152 and Italian economic school 165–68 and Italian exiles 157 and political economy 154 and primogeniture 164 and wages 163 Maceroni, Francis 44–5 Macfarlane, Charles 114, 187 Machiavelli, Niccolò 124, 162, 191, 205 Mackintosh, Sir James 114

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Madison, James 105 n59 Madrid 35, 36, 37 Maitland, Sir Thomas 71 Malthus, Thomas Robert 152, 154, 163, 164, 169, 174 Mandler, Peter 182 Mannori, Luca 117 Manzoni, Alessandro 65 Maria Theresa, Empress 143–4 Marino, Giovan Battista 200–1 Marochetti, Giovanni Battista (GianBattista) 8, 9, 238 and civic virtue 177–82 and commercial society 177–82 and cosmopolitanism 106, 107 and federalism 63 and industrialism 179–80 and international law 100–1, 106 and Italian constitution 145–6 and liberalism 182 and republicanism 157, 179–82 and revolution 18 and sovereignty 148 and supranational institutions 106 writings l’Italie 63 n. 93, 106 n. 63, 108 Independance de l’Italie 82 n. 90, 100 n. 35, 101 and n. 43, 106 n. 61 Mastellone, Salvo 2, 94, 137–8 Mathieu Laensberg (newspaper) 88 Mavrokordatos, Prince Alexander 76, 78, 79, 82 Mazzei, Filippo 42 Mazzini, Giuseppe and Britain 210–11 and the politics of the Carbonari 94–5, 215 and Congress of Vienna 103 and cosmopolitanism 94, 98–9, 107, 224 and counter-intervention 100–1 and emigration debates 30 and English political system 128 and Europe 94 and exiles 2, 214–15, 216, 220 and federalism 50, 63 and Foscolo 215 and Giovine Italia 40, 214 and Holy Alliance of the Peoples 103 and Kant 105 and revolution of 1820 216 writings De la nationalité 103 Scritti politici di Ugo Foscolo 215 ‘Une nuit de Rimini’ 213 (quoted) Melzi d’Eril, Francesco 11, 191 Meriggi, Marco 4, 49–50, 116–17 Mexican Revolution 51–60

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Mexico 49 constitution 52 Escoceses 51–2 and Italian exiles 51–60 Yorkinos 51–2 Michelena, José Mariano 47 Mickiewicz, Adam 225 Milan 17, 195, 197–8, 217 Mill, James 154, 157, 163–4 Minghetti, Marco 184 Mirabeau, Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de 105 n59 Missolonghi (Greece) 66, 85 Moe, Nelson 4, 187–8 monarchies commercial 102 constitutional 120, 143, 145 and republican institutions 145 Monitore Italiano (newspaper) 70 Montani, Giuseppe 184 Monteggia, Luigi 36, 217, 238 Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de 101–2, 180, 191 Monti, Vincenzo 191 Morgan, Lady Sydney 194–202, 209 Italy 194, 195–7 Life of Salvator Rosa 194, 200, 201 Muratori, Lodovico Antonio 191 Mustoxidi, Andrea 65, 68, 71, 75 Naples democratic federalism 61–2 Lady Morgan and 196 lazzaroni 196 liberalism 17, 138–9 patriotism 210 as republic 10, 102 revolutions 18, 141–2 Napoleon as dictator 57 as hero 56 rule in Italy 10, 12–13 legacy of 14, 25, 26, 104–5, 197, 204 and liberalism 56, 228 myth of 50 Napoleonic Civil Code 12 Napoleonists 13, 14–15 national character: ideas of English and Italian compared 117–22 Greek 67, 72–4, 82 Italian 13, 186–8, 192–6, 198–200, 209, 221 Spanish 38 national identity 6–7, 90, 107, 209, 222–3 Navarino, battle of 66 Neely, Sylvia 43

Nelson, Horatio 102 New Lanark 157, 181 New Monthly Magazine 139 Noetics 169 notabilato (social elite) 13 see also aristocracy O’Connor, Maura 188, 189 Odisseas (Greek military chief) 78 Orlando, Ioannis 75 Ortes, GianMaria 165 Ottoman Empire 66, 69, 71 Pagano, Mario 145 Paladini, Guglielmo 142–3, 238 Palma di Cesnola, Count Alerino 9, 238–9 and European Union 104 and Greece 13, 18, 67, 76, 78–9, 81, 83, 91, 214, 227 and international law 105 writings Difesa dei Piemontesi inquisiti a causa degli avvenimenti del 1821 100 Political Catechism to the Greek Youth 77, 95 Summary Account of the Steamboats for Lord Cochran’s Expedition, A 80 Palmerston, John Henry Temple, Viscount 207 Panama, Congress of 106 Pan-American federation 106 Pananti, Filippo 8, 43, 239 Panizzi, Antonio 239 on Austrian despotism 203 on Confalonieri 206 and England 113–14, 208, 214 Papal States 14, 208 Parga (Greece) 69 Parini, Giuseppe 119 Paris 28–9 Parry, William 79 Patria: definitions of 9, 11, 24, 73–4, 83–4, 89–90, 95, 97, 107 Patriarca, Silvana 209 patriotism cosmopolitan 92–9, 106–8, 225 English 189 Greek 67–8, 77 and International brotherhood, 82–5, 89–91 Italian and commerce 159–62, 180 and Il Conciliatore 16–17 during exile 89–90, 106–8, 116–27 democratic (1796–99) 9–10 Napoleonic 11–12, 128 ‘patriotism of hatred’ 17

Index Romantic 86, 90 ‘science’ of 159–69 see also civic virtues Pecchio, Giuseppe 240 and aristocracy 113–4, 147, 182 on Austrian despotism 204, 208 biography (Ugoni) 217 and Carboneria 22, 37 and civilization 96 death 214 and doctrinaires 148 and economia pubblica 163 and England 113–14, 127, 159–60, 182, 183, 219 and English political economy 165–9 and Greek education 81 reform of Papal States 207–8 and Italian constitution 141, 143–4 and moderate liberalism 17, 29 and philhellenism 67, 76, 84 and party politics 123, 124, 125–6 and Santarosa 86 and ‘scienza dell’amor patrio’ 159–69, 185 and Smith, Adam 162 and Società dei Fratelli Costituzionali Europei 35, 37 and Spanish American emancipation 48–9 and Spanish Revolution 34, 38–9 writings Catechismo Italiano 143 ‘Confronto tra gli scrittori Italiani e gli scrittori Inglesi’ 166–8, 177, 184–5 L’anno 1826 dell’Inghilterra 134, 158, 159, 161, 163–4 Le Morganiche 196–7 Osservazioni semi-serie di un esule sull’Inghilterra 115, 168 Saggio Storico sulla amministrazione finanziera dell’ex Regno d’Italia 13 Storia dell’economia pubblica in Italia 158, 160, 162, 165, 166–7, 240 Un’elezione di membri del parlamento in Inghilterra 125, 218, 240 Pécout, Gilles 11, 65 Peel, Sir Robert 219 peerage, hereditary: England 136 see also aristocracy Pellico, Silvio 179, 206–7 Pepe, Gabriele 186 (quoted) Pepe, Guglielmo and idealization of America 43 and Carboneria 22, 240–1 and Colombian emancipation 44–5 death of 221 and French revolution 9 and guerrilla warfare 39–40 and revolution in Naples 18, 141–2

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and Spanish Revolution 37 Pepoli, Carlo 208 Petrusewicz, Marta 4, 209 ‘Philadelphes’ (secret society) 232 philhellenism 65–9, 71–91, 227 Byron and 66, 79, 85 English 75–6, 77–9 Foscolo and 70–5, 90 Italian 67–9, 76–7, 78–81, 82–91 Santarosa and 68, 82, 85–9, 90, 227 philosophical Whiggism 114–15 and exiles 114, 147, 226 Piedmont liberalism 11, 17, 218 ‘patriotism of hatred’ 17 revolution of 1821 16–17 Pistrucci, Filippo 59, 241 Pius VI, Pope 205, 208 Planté, Christine 87 Poerio, Giuseppe 18 Poggiolini, Alessandro 217 Poinsett, Joel Roberts 53 political economy in continental Europe 153 in England 152–4 in Italy 153–6, 165–9 as economia pubblica 154, 163 and civic virtues 160–1, 178–81, 183 and commercial crises 152, 159–60 and exile 57–9 and patriotism 161–3 and political freedom 160, 163 and poverty 160, 169–77, 178–81 and public happiness 154, 168, 176, 184–5, 216 and Risorgimento 156, 184–5 Political Economy Club 157, 174, 175 political opposition: exiles’ views on 124–5 political parties: exiles’ views on 122–4, 150 Poor Laws (England) 29, 153, 157, 158, 160, 170, 174 popular sovereignty: idea of Angeloni and 136–7 doctrinaires and 147 exiles and 148 Porcinari, Nicola 157 Porro Lambertenghi, Count Luigi 67, 127, 241 Prandi, Fortunato 48, 242 Pratt, Mary Louise 47, 210 primato: as idea of Italy’s cultural primacy 11, 156, 165–9, 191–2, 224–6 Protestantism 133–4 see also Anglican Church Proudhon, Pierre Joseph 63 Provana di Collegno, Giacinto 18 public opinion: exiles’ idea of 113, 126–7

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Quarterly Review 74, 132 Rao, Anna Maria 61 reactionaries 26 Reform Bill (1832) 29, 114, 127, 136 Renzi, Angelo M. 217 Repubblica Italiana 10 republicanism and America 25, 43, 58 Angeloni and 136–7 Bentham and 114, 136 and commerce 154, 159, 160–1, 177–82, 183 in France 178 French revolution and 9, 24, 67 in Greece 67, 70, 77 Italian Jacobins and 9 and liberalism 24, 43, 45, 153, 181, 207, 226, 230 Machiavelli and 25, 124, 150, 162 Marochetti and 145 Mazzini and 207, 210 in Mexico 51–8 and political economy 153 Rousseau and 122 varieties of 24–5 Ressi, Adeodato 204 revolution in 1820–21 17–18, 32–3 in 1830 30, 101, 145, 148, 178 French: influence on exiles 9, 24, 50, 61–2, 67, 70, 140, 215, 228 Mexico 51–60 Naples 18, 141–2 Spain 21, 24, 32–41, 92 and transnational civil society 21–31 and utopian expectation 33–5, 40–1 Revue Americaine 44 Revue des Deux Mondes 1, 88, 218, 221 n. 37 Revue encyclopédique 24, 74, 97, 98, 157, 198, 202, 243 Revue Républicaine 178 Riall, Lucy 60 Ricardo, David 152, 154, 163, 167 Ricciardi, Giuseppe 221 Riego, Rafael 21, 32, 38, 58–9, 60, 88 Risorgimento and Anglophilia 147–50, 182, 218–20 and aristocracy 149 and exile 226–30 and federalism 49–50, 61–4 influence of French Revolution 215 and heroism 60–1 historiography of 2–5 and circulation of ideas 6, 7, 26, 229, 230

and liberalism 3, 4–5, 116–17, 146–50, 226–9 and political economy 155–9 Rivadavia, Bernardino 48 Rocafuerte, Vicente 47 Roessel, David 79 Rolandi, Pietro 206 Romagnosi, Gian Domenico 153–4, 155, 171, 184 Romanticism Italian Il Conciliatore, 16–17, 36–7 Foscolo and 140–1 and Mazzini 99 Morgan, Lady and 194–5 political and heroism 58–60, 61, 85–6, 88–9 and liberalism 227 Romeo, Francesco 136, 242 Romilly, Samuel 127 Roo, Andrés Quintana 52 Rosen, Frederick 69, 77, 81 Rose, William Stewart 114, 187; Letters from the North of Italy 187 Rossetti, Gabriele 242 Anti-Papal Spirit of the Italian Classics 205 Comento Analitico to theDivine Comedy 205–6, 242 Rossi, Pellegrino 243 Annales de législation et de jurisprudence 139, 243 and centralised administration 63 and constitutionalism 139, 142, 149 and England 129, 142, 149 and France 214 and French Revolution of 1830 148–9 in Geneva 30 and national identity 223–4 and political economy, definition of 184 and poverty relief 174 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques and general will 148 Italian Jacobins and 9, 10 Marochetti and 180 and political parties 122 Santarosa and critique of 148 and small states 101–2 Ruggiero, Guido de 123 Sacchi, Giuseppe 174 Saint Simon, Claude Henri de 92 and Thierry, Augustin 93, 104 Salfi, Francesco Saverio 243 biography (Renzi) 217 and civilization 96, 97

Index death of 214 and England 134, 144 and Filangieri 134, 144 and Italian culture 198 and Italy (Lady Morgan) 199–200 and Murat 14 and political economy 156–8 and Vico 96 writings Discours sur l’histoire de la Grèce 83 ´ Eloge de Gaetano Filangieri 116, 144–5 Elogio di Antonio Serra 11 L’Italie au dix-neuvième siècle 199 Santa Anna, António López de 56, 59–60, 61 Santangelo de’ Attellis, Orazio 9, 244 and civilization 97 and federalism 53–6 and international federations 106, 107 and Mexican politics 51, 52, 53 and revolution of 1848 214 on Riego 58–9 and Santa Anna 59–60 writing Las cuatro primeras discusiones del Congreso de Panamá tales como debieren ser 46 n. 17, 52 n. 38, 106 n. 62 Santarosa, Santorre Annibale De Rossi di Pomarolo, count 244 and aristocracy 120, 147 and England 114, 116, 127, 219 and French revolution 9 as hero 85–6, 88 and Italian cultural patriotism 11 as moderate liberal 29 and philhellenism 68, 82, 85–9, 90, 227 and Napoleonic rule 13 remembered in Piedmont 218 and revolutionary politics 216, 217 Ricciardi on 221 and Rousseau 148 writings De la révolution piémontaise 244 Delle Speranze degli Italiani 17 Memoirs 218 Sardinia, Kingdom of 195 Say, Jean-Baptiste and commercial crises, 152 and England 135, 159 exiles and, 28, 157, 232 and Italian political economy 157 and political economy, definition of 154 Traité d’économie politique 152 Scalvini, Giovita 214 Scialoja, Antonio 184, 185 secret societies in France 234 in Italy 95, 232

283

political ideas of 24, 26 in Portugal 34 and revolutions 14, 17, 21, 22 Napoleon and 12, 14 in Spain 32, 34, 37 see also Carboneria Senior, Nassau William, 152, 157, 170, 175, 182–3 Septinsular Republic (Greece) 67 Serra, Antonio 11; Trattato 165 Sfacteria (Greece) 85, 86, 89 Sheffer, Gabriel 223 Sicily see Kingdom of the Two Sicilies Sismondi, Jean Charles Léonard Simonde de and Anglophilia 113 and commercial crises 152 and constitution 142 in Geneva 30 and political economy, definition of 154 writings Histoire des républiques italiennes 25, 118, 161, 195 Nouveaux principes d’économie politique 153, 161–2 Recherches sur les constitutions des peuples libres 139 Smith, Adam 162; Wealth of Nations 163, 167 Smith, Sydney 114 Società dei Fratelli Costituzionali Europei 35, 240 Société Cosmopolite 35 ‘Society for the Encouragement of Industry’ 173 Society of the Friends of Italy 211 Spain comuneros 32, 37 exaltados 32, 37, 45 Italian exiles and 34–41 liberalism 25, 32–5, 37, 45 moderados 32 and Napoleon 38 national character 38 peasants 33–4, 38–40 as political model 17, 138 revolution see Spanish Revolution Romantic heroism 58 secret societies 22 Trienio Liberal 32, 33 as a utopian country 34, 42 see also Catalonia; Madrid Spanish America caudillos (military leaders) 58, 60 and democratic federalism 42–64 heroism in 58–61 and independence 44 and liberalism 40–1, 46–7, 60, 61

284


Spanish America (cont.) Risorgimento and 60–4 as a utopian continent 60, 103 see also Bolivia; Colombia; Guatemala; Mexico; Panama Spanish Revolution 21, 24, 32–41, 92 Spaventa, Silvio 2 Spitzer, Alan 22 Spring Rice, Thomas 157, 168–9 Spurzheim, Johann 136 Staël, Auguste de 29, 112–13 Staël, Madame de 112 Considérations sur la Révolution Française 15, 112 n. 6 Corinne 189, 190 Stanhope, Charles, 3rd Earl of 75, 76, 77–8 Stansfield, James 211 Stendhal 178 D’un nouveau complot contre les industriels 88 Scarlet and Black 42 (quoted) Stewart, Dugald 154 Thierry, Augustin 93, 104 Tocqueville, Alexis de 63 Todorova, Maria 72 travel literature and foreign representations of Italy 186–90, 196–202, 209–10 and Italian national character 186–7, 193, 196, 198–200 Italian reactions to 190–6, 199–200 see also Grand Tour Treaty of Westphalia 103 Trechi, Sigismondo 115, 118 Trienio Liberal (Spain) 32, 33 Turin 17, 95 Turks see Ottoman Empire Tuscany 102, 155 Ugoni, Camillo 217 United States and European liberalism 42–3 republicanism and 43–4 as a utopian society 42 Urbinati, Nadia 99, 178, 181 utilitarians, English 26

utopia and the Americas 42, 43, 46 Baczko’s definition of 34 and liberalism 228, 229 and Spanish revolution 33–5, 40–1 Vattel, Emmerich de 99–100 Velestinlis, Rhigas 107 Venice and Austrian despotism 204 constitution 141 and Greek history 84, 85 and patriotism 90 Venturi, Franco 2, 5–6 Verri, Alessandro 119 Verri, Pietro 9, 229 and aristocracy 118, 119 Pecchio and 164, 166 legacy to Risorgimento political economy 184 and primogeniture 164 Vico, GianBattista 96 Victoria, Guadalupe 61 Visconti Arconati, Countess Costanza 30, 157 n. 26 Visconti, Ermes 36 Voyer d’Argenson see Argenson, Marc-René Voyer, Marquis d’ Washington, George 59, 61, 88 Westminster Review 123, 210 Whigs 29, 113, 114, 115, 133, 207 and exiles 114, 127–8 see also Holland House; philosophical Whiggism Wilmot-Horton, Robert 173 Wilson, Sir Robert 44–5 women: Italian and English compared 119–20, 192–3 Yorkinos (Mexico) 51–2 Ypsilanti, Alexander 80 Zavala, Lorenzo de 52, 55 Zea, Francesco Antonio 44

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