Abstract
This book examines Anglo-Italian political and cultural relations from the proclamation of Italy as a unitary and independent state up to the seizure of Rome and the end of the Pope’s temporal power. It analyses the importance and impact of religion, religious sentiments, and religious propaganda in shaping British views of and interactions with Italy. The anti-Papal beliefs of most of the ruling class of Victorian Britain, and the anti-Catholicism of some parts of it, are already well known. However, by looking at high politics and popular culture at the same time, this book attempts to examine the British participation in the making of the new Italy in an original manner. In particular, it focuses on the attempts of a number of British Bible societies and Protestant associations to convert Italy to Protestantism, and on Italian reactions, at the popular level as well as those of the Papacy and the clergy. It puts religion at the centre of a complex political and cultural war that was fought on many different levels and had important implications for global, international, and domestic dimensions: global because of the termination of the Pope’s temporal power; international because of the birth of the Kingdom of Italy, which redesigned the political map of Europe; and domestic (for the United Kingdom) because of the Irish question and the re-establishment of the Catholic hierarchy in England (and later in Scotland).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
L. Sofri, Un grande paese. L’Italia tra vent’anni e chi la cambierà. Milan, 2001, pp. 44–45. Translations are mine throughout, unless otherwise indicated.
I. Katznelson and G. Stedman Jones, ‘Introduction: multiple secularities’, in I. Katznelson and G. Stedman Jones (eds.), Religion and the political imagination. Cambridge, 2010, p. 18.
S. Vertovec, ‘Conceiving and researching transnationalism’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 22 (1999), special isssue, ‘Transnational Communities’, pp. 447–462. See also P. Clavin, ‘Defining transnationalism’, Contemporary European History, 14:4 (2005), pp. 421–439.
G. Toniolo, ‘An overview of Italy’s economic growth’, in G. Toniolo (ed.), The Oxford handbook of the Italian economy since Unification. Oxford, 2013, p. 11;see also table 1.4 on page 12.
N. Moe, The view from Vesuvius. Italian culture and the Southern Question. Berkeley, CA, 2002, p. 2.
For a detailed account of how the first Italian governments (mis-)governed the southern provinces, see L. Riall, Sicily and the Unification of Italy. Liberal policy and local power, 1859–1866. Oxford, 1998.
In L. Riall, Under the volcano. Revolution in a Sicilian town. Oxford, 2013, p. 154.
In C. Petraccone, Le due civiltà: settentrionali e meridionali nella storia d’Italia dal 1860 al 1914. Rome and Bari, 2000, p. 62, cit. in Riall, Under the volcano, p. 154.
See J. Pitts, A turn to empire: the rise ofimperial liberalism in Britain and France. Princeton, NJ, 2006.
K. Mantena, Alibis of empire: The rise of imperial liberalism in Britain and France. Princeton, 2005.
U.S. Mehta, Liberalism and empire: a study in nineteenth-century British liberal thought. Chicago, 1999.
See also D. Losurdo, Liberalism. A counter-history. New York, 2011.
See M. D’Azeglio, I miei ricordi. Milan, 1956, pp. 17–18. The phrase was actually coined by Ferdinando Martini in 1896.
See S. Soldani and G. Turi (eds.), Fare gli italiani: scuola e cultura nell’Italia contemporanea, vol. I. Bologna, 1993, p. 17.
‘Patriotism’, Harper’s Weekly, 2 March 1861, cit. in A.M. Fleche, The revolution of 1861. The American civil war in the age of nationalist conflict. Chapel Hill, NC, 2012.
V. Gioberti, Del primato morale e civile degli italiani. Brussels, 1843, vol. 1, pp. 92–93, cit. in S. Patriarca, ‘Indolence and regeneration: Tropes and tensions of Risorgimento patriotism’, The American Historical Review, 110:2 (2005), pp. 404–405.
Ferdinand Gregorovious was a German historian of Ancient Rome who travelled through Italy in 1855–77. F. Althaus (ed.), The Roman journals of Ferdinand Gregorovius, 1852–1873. London, 1911, pp. 62–63, cit. in E.R. Norman, ‘Cardinal Manning and the temporal power’, in D. Beales and G. Best (eds.), History, society and the churches. Essays in honour of Owen Chadwick. Cambridge, 1985, p. 237.
In M.B. Urban, British opinion and policy on the Unification of Italy, 1856–1861. Scottdale, PA, 1938, p. 253, cit. in L. Riall, ‘Anticattolicesimo e rinascita cattolica: la Gran Bretagna, l’Irlanda e gli Stati pontifici, 1850- 1860’, in R. Balzani and A. Varni (eds.), La Romagna nel Risorgimento. Politica, società e cultura al tempo dell’Unità. Rome-Bari, 2012, p. 26.
C.T. McIntire, England against the Papacy, 1858–1861. Tories, Liberals and the overthrow of Papal temporal power during the Italian Risorgimento. Cambridge, 1983, p. 136.
A.M. Banti, Il Risorgimento italiano. Rome-Bari, 2005, pp. 107–111. See also R. Balzani, ‘Luigi Carlo Farini nella rivoluzione nazionale’, in Balzani and Varni, La Romagna nel Risorgimento, pp. 265–290.
H. McNeile, Speech of the Rev. Dr. M’Neile on the Italian and National Defence Questions, delivered at the Meeting of the Liverpool Auxiliary of the Irish Society. London, 1860, p. 3.
On Palmerston and religion, see N. Scotland, ‘Good and proper men’. Lord Palmerston and the Bench of Bishops. Cambridge, 2000.
J. Wolffe, ‘Lord Palmerston and religion: a reappraisal’, English Historical Review, CXX (2005), pp. 907–936.
A. Howe, ‘“Friends of moderate opinions”: Italian political thought in 1859 in a British Liberal mirror’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 17:5 (2012), pp. 608–611.
See also R. Romani, ‘Political thought in action: the moderates in 1859’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 17:5 (2012), p. 598.
Riall, ‘Anticattolicesimo e rinascita cattolica’, p. 22. See also McIntire, England against the Papacy, pp. 189–221; D. Beales, England and Italy. London, 1961, pp. 99–130.
See L. Riall, Garibaldi. Invention of a hero. New Haven, CT, 2007.
FJ. Coppa, Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli and Papal politics in European affairs. Albany, NY, 1990, pp. 125–126.
J. Parry, The politics of patriotism. English liberalism, national identity and Europe, 1830–1866. Cambridge, 2006, p. 231, cit. in Howe, ‘“Friends of moderate opinions”’, p. 608.
J. Pemble, The Mediterranean passion. Victorians and Edwardians in the South. Oxford, 1988, p. 10.
Lucy Riall has recently recontructed Britain’s anti-Catholicism and anti-Popery of the 1850s in an article published in Italian: Riall, ‘Anticattolicesimo e rinascita cattolica’, in Balzani and Varni, La Romagna nel Risorgimento, pp. 5–44. For older and more detailed treatments, see McIntire, England against the Papacy; and S. Matsumoto-Best, Britain and the Papacy in the Age of Revolution, 1846–1851. London, 2003.
McIntire, England against the Papacy, p. 8. See also D. Hempton and M. Hill, Evangelical Protestantism in Ulster Society, 1740–1890. London, 1992.
L. Colley, Britons. Forging the nation, 1707–1837. New Haven, CT, 1992.
K. O’Brien, ‘Protestantism and the poetry of Empire, 1660–1800’, in J. Black, Culture and society in Britain, 1660–1800. Manchester, 1997, p. 146.
J.A. Jackson, The Irish in Britain. London, 1963, p. 7, cit. in W.L. Arnstein, Protestant versus Catholic in mid-Victorian England. Mr. Newdegate and the nuns. Columbia and London, 1982, p. 52. See also A.G. Newby, ‘Scottish anti-Catholicism in a British and European context: The ”North Pole Mission” and Victorian Scotland’, in Y.M. Werner and J. Harvard (eds.), European anti-Catholicism in a comparative and transnational perspective. European Studies: An interdisciplinary series in European culture, history and politics, no. 31. Amsterdam, 2013, pp. 237–251.
See W.M. Walker, ‘Irish immigrants in Scotland: Their priests, politics, and parochial life’, Historical Journal, 15:4 (1972), pp. 649–668.
D.M. Smith, Victor Emanuel, Cavour, and the Risorgimento. Oxford, 1971, p. 157. On nations and nationalism, see E.J. Hobsbawm, Nations and nationalism since 1780. Cambridge, 1990.
E. Gellner, Nations and nationalism. Oxford, 1983.
B. Anderson, Imagined communities. Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London, 1983.
J. Breuilly, Nationalism and the State, 2nd edition, Manchester, 1993.
A.D. Smith, Nationalism and modernism: a critical survey of recent theories of nations and nationalism. London, 2003. See also E. Renan, ‘What is a nation?’, in G. Eley and R.G. Suny, Becoming national. A reader. Oxford, 1996, p. 45.
K.W. Deutsch, Nationalism and its alternatives. New York, 1969.
E.P. Thompson, ‘The peculiarities of the English’, Socialist Register, 2 (1965), p. 331, http://socialistregister.com/index.php/srv/article/view/5963#.UjGTvby0-BD; also at http://www.marxists.org/archive/thompson-ep/1965/english.htm [accessed 28 May 2014], emphasis in the original.
D. Beales, ‘II Risorgimento protestante’, Rassegna Storica del Risorgimento, XLIII (1956), p. 232.
E. Biagini, ‘Anglofilia e storiografia’, in A. Giovagnoli and G. del Zanna (eds.), Il mondo visto dall’Italia. Milan, 2004, p. 69.
For a traditional overview on the British Empire, see A. Porter (ed.), The Oxford history of the British Empire, Volume III: The nineteenth century. Oxford, 1999.
See O. Chadwick, A history of the Popes 1830–1914. Oxford, 1998, pp.168–214.
Isabella, Risorgimento in exile, p. 133. See also S. Patriarca, Italian vices: Nation and character from the Risorgimento to the Republic. Cambridge, 2010, pp. 69–70.
In Patriarca, Italian vices, p. 70. On Aristide Gabelli, see R. Romani, National character and public spirit in Britain and France, 1750–1914. Cambridge, 2002, p. 306.
Throughout the book, I have preferred not to use the concepts ‘national identity’ and ‘identity’, as they were never used at the time. Moreover, there are good arguments to sustain that it may not be possible, for historians, to study ‘national identity’ (even assuming that we are able to agree on what it is and what it means), as this would imply understanding what was going on in people’s minds when they thought about themselves and others. It is instead preferable to speak of ‘national character’ when examining (over-) simplified, and commonly prejudicial, assessments of the allegedly typical characteristics and cultural norms of the members of one’s own or, more often, another national community. See P. Mandler, ‘What is “national identity”? Definitions and applications in modern British historiography’, Modern Intellectual History, 3:2 (2006), pp. 271–297.
In Patriarca, Italian vices, pp. 169–170. See G. Gangale, Rivoluzione protestante. Turin, 1925.
G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of mind, trans. W. Wallace. London, 1971, para. 552, p. 287, cit. in G. Stedman Jones, ‘Religion and the origins of socialism’, in Katznelson and Stedman Jones, Religion and the political imagination, p. 185.
J.C.D. Clark, ‘Protestantism, nationalism, and national identity, 16601832’, Historical Journal, 43:1 (2000), pp. 249–276.
For an earlier criticism of historians’ tendency to ignore religion, see A. Hastings, The construction ofnationhood. Ethnicity, religion and nationalism. Cambridge, 1997.
See P.E. Hammond (ed.), The sacred in a secular age: toward revision in the scientific study of religion. Berkely, CA, 1985.
J. Cox, ‘Secularization and other master narratives of religion in modern Europe’, Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, 14 (2001), pp. 24–35.
H. Lehmann (ed.), Säkularisierung, Dechristianisierung, Rechristianisierung in neuzeitlichen Europa. Bilanz und Perspektiven der Forschung. Göttingen, 1997.
H. Lehmann, Säkularisierung, Der europäische Sonderweg in Sachen Religion. Göttingen, 2004.
H. McLeod, Secularisation in Western Europe, 1848–1914. Basingstoke, 2000.
R. Rémond, Religion et société en Europe aux XIX et XX siècles. Essai sur la secularization. Paris, 1996.
O. Chadwick, The secularisation of the European mind in the nineteenth century. Cambridge, 1975.
See Manuel Borutta’s interpretation of the secularisation theory as an invention of 1840s male progressive elites which greatly influenced Western conceptions of modernity, in M. Borutta, ‘Genealogie der Säkularisierungstheorie. Zur Historisierung einer großen Erzählung der Moderne’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 36:3 (2010), pp. 347–376.
D. Martin, ‘Towards eliminating the concept of secularisation’, in J. Gould (ed.), Penguin survey of the social sciences. Harmondsworth, 1965, reprinted in D. Martin, The religious and the secular: studies in secularization. New York, 1969. See also G. Lenski, The religious factor. Garden City, NY, 1961.
H. McLeod, The religious crisis of the 1960s. Oxford, 2007.
H. McLeod, ‘Why were the 1960s so religiously explosive?’, Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift, 60 (2006), pp. 109–130. H. McLeod, ‘The 1960s’, in Katznelson and Stedman Jones, Religion and the political imagination, pp. 254–274.
C. Taylor, A secular age. Cambridge, MA, 2007.
M. Warner, J. Vanantwerpen and C. Calhoun (eds.), Varieties of secularism in a secular age. Cambridge, MA, 2010.
P. Norris and R. Inglehart, Sacred and secular. Cambridge, 2004.
S. Bruce, God is dead, secularization in the West. Oxford, 2002.
H. McLeod, Religion and the people of Western Europe, 1789–1970. Oxford, 1981.
P. Hammond (ed.), The sacred in a secular age. Berkeley, 1985.
J. Casanova, Public religions in the modern world. Chicago, 1994.
See the important historiographical reviews by J.C.D. Clark, ‘Secularization and modernization: The failure of a “grand narrative”’, The Historical Journal, 55:1 (2012), pp. 161–194.
J. Morris, ‘Secularization and religious experience: Arguments in the historiography of modern British religion’, The Historical Journal, 55:1 (2012), pp. 195–219.
See also O. Blaschke, ‘Das 19. Jahrhundert: Ein Zweites Konfessionelles Zeitalter?’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 26 (2000), pp. 38–75.
A. Green and V. Viaene, ‘Introduction: Rethinking religion and globalisation’, in A. Green and V. Viaene (eds.), Religious internationals in the modern world. Globalisation and faith communities since 1750. Basingstoke, 2002, p. 1.
J. Dingley, ‘Sacred communities: religion and national identities’, National Identities, 13:4 (2011), p. 389. See also J. Dingley, ‘Religion, Protestants and national identity: a response to the March 2009 issue’, National Identities, 15:2(2013), pp. 101–124.
C.A. Bayly, The birth of the modern world, 1780–1914. Oxford, 2004, pp. 325, 330.
M. Mazower, The Balkans. London, 2000, p. 76, cit. in Bayly, The birth of the modern world, p. 362.
C. Barr, ‘An Irish dimension to a British Kulturkampf?’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 56:3 (July 2005), p. 493.
C. Barr, ‘“Imperium in Imperio”: Irish episcopal imperialism in the nineteenth century’, English Historical Review, CXXIII:502 (June 2008), pp. 611–650. On Catholic and Anglo-Catholic influences within British politics see D. Quinn, Patronage and piety. The politics of English Roman Catholicism, 1850–1900. Stanford, CA, 1993.
H. Jenkins, ‘The Irish dimension of the British Kulturkampf: Vaticanism and civil allegiance’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 30:3 (July 1979), p. 355.
See D. Bowen, Paul Cardinal Cullen and the shaping of modern Irish Catholicism. Dublin, 1983.
See now C. Barr, M. Finelli and A. O’Connor (eds.), Nation/Nazione: Irish Nationalism and the Italian Risorgimento. Dublin, 2013.
See also J. O’Brien, ‘Irish public opinion and the Risorgimento, 1859–60’, Irish Historical Studies, xxxiv:135 (2005), pp. 289–305.
R. Dudley Edwards (ed.), Ireland and the Italian Risorgimento. Dublin, 1960.
D.H. Akenson, Half the world from home: perspectives on the Irish in New Zealand, 1869–1950. Wellington, 1990, p. 160, cit. in Barr, ‘“Imperium in Imperio”’, p. 612. Hiberno-Romanism was ‘a subset of a wider neo- ultramontanism that swept the Catholic Church in the nineteenth century’, in ibid.
K.T. Hoppen, The mid-Victorian generation, 1846–1886. Oxford, 1998, p. 427.
C. Hall, ‘Religion and politics in Modern Britain’ (Review article), Historical Journal, 46:2 (2003), p. 470.
P. Grosskurth (ed.), The memoirs of John Addington Symonds. London, 1984, p. 244, cit. in Pemble, The Mediterranean passion, p. 55.
R. Blake, Disraeli. London, 1966, p. 503, cit. in W.L. Arnstein, ‘The religious issue in mid-Victorian politics: A note on a neglected source’, Albion, 6:2 (Summer 1974), p. 142 n. 18.
J. Melnyk, Victorian Religion. Faith and life in Britain. Westport, CT, 2008, p. 1.
K. Robbins and J. Fisher, ‘Introduction’, in K. Robbins and J. Fisher, Religion and diplomacy: Religion and British foreign policy, 1815 to 1914. Dordrecht, 2010, p. 2. See also Watts, The Dissenters. Volume II, pp. 1–3.
W.H. Hamilton, Recollections of a tour in 1822, vol. 3, pp. 32–33. Cit. in M. O’Connor, The romance of Italy and the English political imagination. New York, 1998, pp. 51–52.
Enoch Powell, speech at Trinity College, Dublin, 1946, in S. Collini, Public moralists. Political thought and intellectual life in Britain. Oxford, 1991.
See O’Connor, The romance of Italy and R. Cavaliero, Italia Romantica: English Romantics and Italian Freedom. London, 2005.
S.M. Griffin, Anti-Catholicism and nineteenth-century fiction. Cambridge, 2004, p. 4.
D. Bell, The idea of Greater Britain. Empire and the future of world order, 1860– 1900. Princeton, NJ, 2007, p. 21.
A. Howe, Free trade and liberal England, 1846–1946. Oxford, 1997, p. 195. Colportage was invented by the BFBS ‘ s agent in France, Victor de Pressensé, who in 1837 ‘persuaded the Society to experiment with hiring door-to-door salesmen’, who came to be known as colporteurs (in Batalden, Cann and Dean, Sowing the Word). The term comes from the French word for ‘itinerant peddlers (porter) who carried a pack over their shoulders or around their necks (col)’, in R. Balmer (ed.), Encyclopaedia of evangelicalism. Waco, TX, 2002, p. 181.
F. Chabod, Italian Foreign Policy. The statecraft of the founders, translated by W. McCuaig. Princeton, NJ, 1996, p. xxxix.
F. Trentmann, Free trade nation. Commerce, consumption, and civil society in modern Britain. Oxford, 2008, p. 14.
E.F. Biagini, Liberty, retrenchment and reform: popular liberalism in the Age of Gladstone, 1860–1880. Cambridge, 1992, p. 2.
For an excellent study of British foreign policy which, however, neglects religion, see P. Kennedy, The Realities behind diplomacy: background influences on British external policy, 1865–1980. London, 1981.
See an important work of historical sociology: Casanova, Public religions in the modern world. See also S. Bruce (ed.), Religion and modernization. Sociologists and historians debate the secularization thesis. Oxford, 1992. The history of American foreign relations has for long suffered a similar fate, which however has now been rectified by the work of Andrew Preston, and in particular by his magisterial Sword of the spirit, shield of faith. Religion in American war and diplomacy. New York, 2012. Nothing comparable exists, as yet, on the history of British foreign relations, although historians have begun to pay attention to the role played by religion in specific episodes of British foreign policy.
See, for example, O. Figes, Crimea: The last Crusade. London, 2010.
K. Robbins and J. Fisher, Religion and diplomacy: Religion and British foreign policy, 1815 to 1941. Dordrecht, 2010.
Parry, The politics of patriotism. Interesting, but focusing upon an earlier time period, is D. Johnston and C. Sampson (eds.), Religion: The missing dimension of statecraft. Oxford, 1994.
A.M. Banti and P. Ginsborg (eds.), Storia d’Italia. Annali 22. Il Risorgimento. Turin, 2007.
M. Isnenghi and E. Cecchinato (eds.), Gli italiani in guerra: conflitti, identità, memorie dal Risorgimento ai nostri giorni, I, Fare l’Italia: unità e disunità nel Risorgimento. Turin, 2008.
For an exhaustive and in-depth review of the current intellectual vibrancy in the field of Risorgimento studies, see M. Isabella, ‘Rethinking Italy’s nation-building 150 years afterwards: The new Risorgimento historiography’, Past and Present, no. 217 (November 2012), pp. 247–268.
See also D. Raponi, ‘Heroism, vice, and the Risorgimento’, The Historical Journal, 54:4 (December 2011), pp. 1185–1195.
A.M. Banti, La nazione del Risorgimento. Parentela, santità e onore alle origini dell’Italia unita. Turin, 2000.
See also A.M. Banti and R. Bizzocchi, Immagini della nazione nell’Italia del Risorgimento. Rome, 2002.
For an important historiographical debate on Banti’s cultural approach to the Risorgimento, see L. Riall et al., ‘Alberto Banti’s interpretation of Risorgimento nationalism: a debate’, Nations and nationalism, 15:3 (2009), pp. 396–460.
On the nation of the Risorgimento and the legacy of the nationalist discourse in liberal and fascist Italy, see A.M. Banti, Sublime madre nostra. La nazione italiana dal Risorgimento al fascismo. Bari and Rome, 2011.
L. Riall, ‘Nation, “deep images” and the problem of emotions’, Nations and nationalism, 15:3 (2009), p. 402.
A.M. Banti, ‘Conclusions: Performative effects and “deep images” in national discourse’, in L. Cole (ed.), Different paths to the nation. Regional and national identities in Central Europe and Italy, 1830–1870. London, 2007, p. 225. Figure profonde may be translated as ‘deep images’, as Banti himself suggests in his ‘Conclusions’, pp. 220–229.
A. Lyttelton, ‘Creating a national past: History, myth, and image in the Risorgimento’, in A. Russell Ascoli and K. von Henneberg (eds.), Making and remaking Italy. The cultivation of national identity around the Risorgimento. Oxford and New York, 2001, p. 63.
J. Breuilly, ‘Risorgimento nationalism in the light of general debates about nationalism’, Nations and Nationalism, 15:3 (2009), p. 442. On anticlericalism, see F. Conti, ‘Breve storia dell’anticlericalismo’, in A. Melloni (ed.), Cristiani d’Italia. Chiesa, Società, Stato, 1861–2011. vol. I. Rome, 2011, pp. 667–684.
For a recent and thorough, albeit brief, summary of the achievements and the unresolved problems of the new Risorgimento historiography, see S. Patriarca and L. Riall, ‘Introduction: Revisiting the Risorgimento’, in S. Patriarca and L. Riall (eds.), The Risorgimento revisited. Nationalism and culture in nineteenth-century Italy. Basingstoke, 2012, pp. 1–17.
See also J. Davis, ‘Rethinking the Risorgimento?’, in N. Bouchard (ed.), Risorgimento in modern Italian culture. Madison, NJ, 2005, pp. 27–53.
L. Riall, ‘Martyr cults in nineteenth-century Italy’, Journal of Modern History, 82:2 (June 2010), special issue, The persistence of religion in modern Europe, p. 259.
M. Isabella, ‘“Apostles of the nation and pilgrims of freedom”: Religious representations of exile in nineteenth-century Europe’, in S. Lechenicht and K. Heinsohn (eds.), Diaspora identities. Exile, nationalism and cosmopolitanism in past and present. Frankfurt, 2009, p. 68.
F. Traniello, ‘Religione e nazione’, in A. Roccucci (ed.), La costruzione dello Stato-nazione in Italia. Rome, 2012, p. 231.
Isabella, ‘Rethinking Italy’s nation-building 150 years afterwards’, p. 254. An absorbing piece in which religion matters greatly is E.F. Biagini, ‘Citizenship and religion in the Italian constitutions, 1796–1849’, History of European Ideas, 37 (2011), pp. 211–217.
G. Spini, Risorgimento e protestanti. Naples, 1956.
G. Spini, L’Evangelo e il berretto frigio. Storia della Chiesa Cristiana Libera in Italia, 1870–1904. Turin, 1971.
G. Spini, Studi sull’evangelismo italiano tra Otto e Novecento. Turin, 1994.
G. Spini, Italia liberale e protestanti. Turin, 2002. See also V. Vinay, L. Desanctis e il movimento evangelico italiano durante il Risorgimento. Turin, 1965.
D. Maselli, Storia dei battisti italiani, 1863–1923. Turin, 2003.
D. Maselli, Tra risveglio e millenio. Storia delle Chiese Cristiane dei Fratelli, 1836–1886. Turin, 1974.
E. Biagini, ‘Risorgimento e protestanti’, in S. Maghenzani and G. Platone (eds.), Riforma, risorgimento e risveglio: il protestantesimo italiano tra radici storiche e questioni contemporanee. Claudiana, Torino, 2011, p. 86.
Isabella, Risorgimento in exile, p. 5. See also M. Isabella, ‘Emotions, rationality and political intentionality in patriotic discourse’, Nations and Nationalism, 15:3 (2009), p. 427.
Patriarca and Riall, ‘Introduction: Revisiting the Risorgimento’, in Patriarca and Riall, The Risorgimento revisited, p. 6. On the importance of writing the history of the Risorgimento from a transnational point of view, see O. Janz and L. Riall, ‘Special issue: The Italian Risorgimento: transnational perspectives. Introduction’, Modern Italy, 19:1 (2014), pp. 1–4. See the whole special issue 19:1 (2014) of Modern Italy.
Isabella, Risorgimento in exile; Riall, Garibaldi; S. Recchia and N. Urbinati (eds.), A cosmpolitanism of nations: Giuseppe Mazzini’s writings on democracy, nation building, and international relations. Princeton, NJ, 2009.
G. Pécout, ‘The international armed volunteers: pilgrims of a transnational Risorgimento’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 14:4 (2009), pp. 413–426.
D. Reill, Nationalists who feared the nation: Adriatic multi-nationalism in Habsburg Dalmatia, Trieste, and Venice. Stanford, CA, 2012.
G. Stedman Jones, ‘Religion and liberty in European political thought 1800–1860 ca’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 17:5 (2012), p. 591. See also L. Riall, ‘Travel, migration, exile: Garibaldi’s global fame’, Modern Italy, 19:1 (2014), pp. 41–52.
M. Isabella, ‘Nationality before liberty? Risorgimento political thought in transnational context’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 17:5 (2012), pp. 507–508.
Important amongst the most recent publications are: C. Bayly and E.F. Biagini (eds.), Giuseppe Mazzini and the globalisation of democratic nationalism. Oxford, 2008.
Isabella, Risorgimento in exile; and D. Armitage, Foundations of modern international thought. Cambridge, 2013.
D. Laven, ‘Italy. The idea of the nation in the Risorgimento and liberal eras’, in T. Baycroft and M. Hewitson (eds.), What is a nation? Europe 1789–1914. Oxford, 2006, p. 266. See Gioberti, Del primato morale e civile degli italiani.
B. Haddock, ‘Political union without social revolution: Vincenzo Gioberti’s Primato’, Historical Journal, 41:3 (1998), pp. 705–723.
On Gioberti, see also F. Sofia, ‘The promised land: biblical themes in the Risorgimento’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 17:5 (2012), pp. 581–583.
F. Traniello, ‘Religione, nazione e sovranità nel Risorgimento italiano’, Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa, 28:1 (1992), pp. 319–368.
A. Manzoni, Osservazioni sulla morale cattolica. Milan, 1819.
J.C.L. Simonde de Sismondi, Histoire des républiques italiennes du Moyen Âge, 16 vols, 2nd ed. Zurich, 1809–1818.
See B. Haddock, ‘State, nation and Risorgimento’, in G. Bedani and B. Haddock, The politics of Italian national identity. A multidisciplinary perspective. Cardiff, 2000, p. 25. See also M. Viroli, Come se Dio ci fosse. Religione e libertà nella storia d’Italia. Turin, 2009, pp. 147–148. This outstanding book is also available in English: M. Viroli, As if God existed: Religion and liberty in the history of Italy. Princeton, NJ, 2012.
R. Grew, ‘Culture and society, 1796–1896’, in J.A. Davis (ed.), Italy in the nineteenth century. Oxford, 2000, pp. 222.
C. Seton-Watson, Italy from liberation to fascism, 1870–1925. London, 1968, p. 11, cit. in Riall, Sicily and the Unification of Italy, p. 121.
R. Romani, ‘Reluctant revolutionaries: Moderate liberalism in the Kingdom of Sardinia, 1849–1859’, The Historical Journal, 55:1 (2012), p. 70.
On the importance of studying the anti-Risorgimento movement, see D. Laven, ‘Why patriots wrote and what reactionaries read: reflections on Alberto Banti’s La nazione del Risorgimento’, Nations and Nationalism, 15:3 (2009), pp. 419–426 (especially p. 424). See also U. Parente, ‘Il Risorgimento e il paradigma intransigente’, in Melloni, Cristiani d’Italia, pp. 631–640.
M. Viroli, Come se Dio ci fosse. Religione e libertà nella storia d’Italia. Turin, 2009, pp. 121–227.
Gioacchino Ventura has been neglected by historians, but in his times and until the beginning of the twentieth century he was placed next to Vincenzo Gioberti and Antonio Rosmini as a major Catholic thinker. See now R. Romani, ‘Liberal theocracy in the Risorgimento’, European History Quarterly, 2014 (forthcoming). I am grateful to prof. Roberto Romani for having shown me a copy of his article before publication.
On the problem of religion which ‘still remains somewhat unrepresented in the new historiography [of the Risorgimento]’, see L. Riall, Risorgimento. The history of Italy from Napoleon to nation-state. Basingstoke, 2009, p. 130.
P. Mandler, ‘ “Race” and “nation” in mid-Victorian thought’, in S. Collini, R. Whatmore and B. Young, History, religion, and culture. British intellectual history 1750–1950. Cambridge, 2000, p. 227. Mandler suggests that English political thought was imbued with evangelical Christianity, and evangelicalism ‘strengthened the presumption of a “natural” progression from primitive to advanced states, what one might call the “civilisational” perspective’, in ibid., p. 226.
See also E.J. Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction: Inventing traditions’, in E.J. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger (eds.), The invention of tradition. Cambridge, 1983.
Equally, John Breuilly questioned the political significance of cultures or ethnies, in J. Breuilly, ‘The state and nationalism’, in M. Guibernau and J. Hutchinson (eds.), Understanding nationalism. Cambridge, 2001, pp. 33–34, 49–51;and Breuilly, Nationalism and the state, pp. 1–15, 404–406.
‘State-nations’ and ‘cultural nations’ are expressions coined by Friedrich Meinecke in 1907;see H. Kohn, The idea of nationalism: A study in its origin and background. New York, 1944. Ernest Gellner has attempted to create a more complicated model, however the basic dual distinction remains; see E. Gellner, Nations and nationalism.
Bell, ‘Imagined spaces’, in W. Mulligan and B. Simms (eds.), The primacy of foreign policy in British history, 1660–2000. How strategic concerns shaped modern Britain. Basingstoke, 2010, p. 210, n. 8.
Preston, Sword ofthe spirit, shield offaith, p. 13. See also A. Porter, Religion versus empire? British Protestant missionaries and overseas expansion, 1700–1914. Manchester, 2004.
N. Etherington (ed.), Missions and empire. The Oxford history of the British Empire. Oxford, 2005.
On the importance of religion and, specifically, evangelicalism in nineteenth-century England, see Boyd Hilton’s fundamental works: The age of atonement: the influence of evangelicalism on social and economic thought, 1795–1865. Oxford, 1988; and his A mad, bad, and dangerous people?: England, 1783–1846. Oxford, 2006.
K. Kumar, The making of English national identity. Cambridge, 2003.
P. Mandler, The English national character. The history of an idea from Edmund Burke to Tony Blair. New Haven, CT, 2006.
J. Wolffe, ‘A transatlantic perspective: Protestantism and national identities in mid-nineteenth-century Britain and the United States’, in T. Claydon and I. McBride, Protestantism and national identity: Britain and Ireland c. 1650– c.1850. Cambridge, 1998, pp. 295–296. It is also to be noted that this book does not deal with separate Scottish or Welsh attitudes to Rome, even though at times it highlights the important presence of Scottish Protestants in Italy.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2014 Danilo Raponi
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Raponi, D. (2014). Introduction: Britain and Italy, Religion and Politics. In: Religion and Politics in the Risorgimento. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137342980_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137342980_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-46543-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-34298-0
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)