This monograph investigates the rise of (multiple) patriotic and political sensibilities in nineteenth-century Italy, with a particular focus on the moralisation of political discourses. Roberto Romani's aim in this book is to explore the relevance of the moral element in the political culture of the Italian Risorgimento. He analyses the nexus between the political and the moral dimensions of the struggles for national independence and liberty which jeopardised the Italian peninsula after the Congress of Vienna. The author is particularly interested in patriotic sensibilities as elements of situated political idioms. He uses a broad concept of sensibility, which includes the ideas, emotions, values and perceptions of radical as well as moderate patriots.
According to Romani, two coherent ‘psychological and characteriological wholes’ (p. 4) are distinguishable within the mosaic of sensibilities of the Risorgimento: the Italian democratic and republican camp on the one hand, and moderatism on the other. Romani's book is divided into four major sections which analyse these two moral and political programmes. The first chapter deals with the making of moderate sensibilities against the ‘passions’ of revolution in post-Napoleonic Europe. The second and third chapters discuss the transformation of political moderatism in the 1840s (Chapter 2), and the development of patriotic sentiments within the Italian democratic camp (Chapter 3). Finally, a fourth chapter deals with political moderatism in action during the 1850s (‘The Reason of the Elites’).
The republican Mazzini and his followers were devoted to revolutionary ideas which presupposed total commitment to the cause. By contrast, moderates were for the most part aristocratic liberals such as Count Cesare Balbo, the prime minister of Piedmont-Sardinia in 1848. They were supporters of a constitutional monarchy based on limited suffrage. Moderate thinking was heavily inspired by private virtues and by Catholic as well as Stoic moral traditions. As indicated by the term ‘moderatism’, the patriotic sensibilities and claims of leading moderates were seemingly much more prudent than Mazzini's aspirations and claims, at least until the 1840s. However, Mazzinianism and (pre-1848) moderatism were not merely political projects. They both included ideas of moral and religious resurgence. Romani stresses that the complexity of the Risorgimento and its political culture can only be fully understood if we explore the ethical element and the sensibilities associated with patriotic mobilisation.
During the last two decades, and especially after the publication of Alberto Mario Banti's studies, a great deal of scholarly attention has been dedicated to the cultural and intellectual history of the Risorgimento. In recent years, emotions linked with national narratives have been quite well studied too. The recent scholarly attention to the nexus between emotions, gender, and patriotic and political sensibilities is not limited to the Italian case, but can be also observed in different national contexts. For example, the rise of patriotic beliefs and sensibilities in modern Germany has been extensively studied by historians such as Ute Frevert, Karen Hagemann, Ute Planert and Birgit Aschmann. Romani does not systematically compare his results with those of scholars working in other national contexts. Furthermore, the investigation of gender issues and the role played by women in nation-building, which are among the most broadly discussed topics in current Risorgimento historiography, appear to be quite marginal in Romani's book. Neither does the author consider recent studies on the intellectual history of nineteenth-century conservatism and, therefore, he cannot compare the political sensibilities of radical and moderate patriots with those of ‘enemies’ of the Risorgimento (conservative legitimists, reactionary and ultra-Catholic networks).
As mentioned above, the cultural history of Risorgimento nationalism inaugurated by Banti has stimulated many innovative studies during the last two decades. Roberto Romani's new monograph clearly belongs to this line of research. This book is a well-organised and detailed volume which offers a comprehensive analysis of the intellectual history of patriotic sensibilities. The chapters dedicated to moderatism, notably the fourth chapter, are the most innovative and intriguing part of the book. They give a carefully researched overview of the making of moderate sensibilities, and make a convincing argument for reassessing traditional interpretations of Italian moderatism in the 1850s.
Romani describes post-1848 ‘moderatism’ as shifting towards an extreme and divisive political outlook, and he highlights that the weakness and the contradictions of moderate politics clearly emerged after 1861, when the new nation state relied increasingly on coercion rather than consensus. According to Romani, the political framework labelled as ‘moderate’ was built on the obsessive denunciation of its domestic enemies and provoked the rise of ‘a world of opposites … built on the contrast between moderate reason and democratic passions: between order and disorder, prudence and recklessness, stability and instability, religion and atheism, concord and conflict’ (p. 244). Romani's book gives a detailed account of the political, cultural and moral dimension that dominated the field of politics in the most crucial period of the Italian Risorgimento. Finally, and more importantly, this monograph provides important insights into the fundamental role played by the paradigms of reason and passion in nineteenth-century political discourse.
