Lucy Riall

Professor of History Lucy Riall

Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Italian revolutionary leader and popular hero, was among the best-known figures of the 19th century. This book examines his life and the making of his cult-like following, assesses its impact, and chronicles its surprising success.

Invention of a Hero

Garibaldi

Lecturer in Modern European History Lucy Riall

The Risorgimento was a turbulent and decisive period in the history of Italy. Lucy Riall's engaging account is the first book of its kind on the upheavals of the years between 1815 and 1860, when a series of crises destabilised the states of Restoration Italy and led to the creation of a troubled nation state in 1860. Comprehensive, yet original, this textbook: * Examines the social history of nineteenth century Italy and the social context of political action * Offers a critical overview of the historiography of the topic * Takes account of the most recent literature, especially literature in Italian not normally accessible to students * Adopts a broad thematic approach * Places the Italian experience in a European context

State, Society and National Unification

The Italian Risorgimento

This is the first in-depth analysis of the impact of Italian unification on the hitherto isolated communities of rural Sicily. Traditional explanations of Sicily's instability depict a society trapped by a feudal past. Lucy Riall finds instead that many areas of the island were experiencing a period of rapid modernization, as local government increased their organizational efforts. Beginning with the period prior to the revolution of 1860, Dr Riall shows why successive attempts at political reform failed, and analyses the effects of this failure. She describes the bitter and violent conflict between rival elites and the mounting tide of peasant unrest which together threatened the status quo within the isolated communities of the Sicilian interior. Through an examination of the problems of local government - tax collection, conscription, the organization of policing - and of attempts to suppress peasant disturbances and control crime, she shows that the modernization of the Sicilian countryside both undermined the control of the central government and made the countryside itself more unstable.

Liberal Policy and Local Power, 1859-1866

Sicily and the Unification of Italy

Explores the riot in the Sicilian town of Bronte, on the slopes of Mount Etna and under the domination of British landowners and links this event to larger themes of poverty, injustice, mismanagement, and Britain's policy towards Italy in the 19th century.

Revolution in a Sicilian Town

Under the Volcano

Lecturer in Modern European History David Laven

David Laven

A revisionist collection of essays which reassess the legacy of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars on the governments of Restoration Europe. The papers are based on recent research.

Problems of Government in Restoration Europe

Napoleon's Legacy

Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Italian revolutionary leader and popular hero, was among the best-known figures of the nineteenth century. This book seeks to examine his life and the making of his cult, to assess its impact, and understand its surprising success. For thirty years Garibaldi was involved in every combative event in Italy. His greatest moment came in 1860, when he defended a revolution in Sicily and provoked the collapse of the Bourbon monarchy, the overthrow of papal power in central Italy, and the creation of the Italian nation state. It made him a global icon, representing strength, bravery, manliness, saintliness, and a spirit of adventure. Handsome, flamboyant, and sexually attractive, he was worshiped in life and became a cult figure after his death in 1882. Lucy Riall shows that the emerging cult of Garibaldi was initially conceived by revolutionaries intent on overthrowing the status quo, that it was also the result of a collaborative effort involving writers, artists, actors, and publishers, and that it became genuinely and enduringly popular among a broad public. The book demonstrates that Garibaldi played an integral part in fashioning and promoting himself as a new kind of “charismatic” political hero. It analyzes the way the Garibaldi myth has been harnessed both to legitimize and to challenge national political structures. And it identifies elements of Garibaldi’s political style appropriated by political leaders around the world, including Mussolini and Che Guevara.

Christopher Fletcher

Rachel E. Moss

Sean Brady

This handbook aims to challenge ‘gender blindness’ in the historical study of high politics, power, authority and government, by bringing together a group of scholars at the forefront of current historical research into the relationship between masculinity and political power. Until very recently in historical terms, formal political authority in Europe was normally and ideally held by adult males, with female power being perceived as a recurrent aberration. Yet paradoxically the study of the interactions between masculinity and political culture is still very much in its infancy. This volume seeks to remedy this lacuna by considering the different consequences of the masculinity of power over two millennia of European history. It examines how masculinity and political culture have interacted from ancient Rome and the early medieval Byzantine empire, to twentieth-century Germany and Italy. It considers a broad variety of case studies from early medieval Iceland and late medieval France, to Naples at the time of the French Revolution and Strasbourg after the Franco-Prussian War, with a particular focus on the development of political masculinities in Great Britain between the sixteenth century and the present day.

The Palgrave Handbook of Masculinity and Political Culture in Europe

Una biografia egregiamente documentata e scritta con la vivacità tipica della storiografia anglosassone. Lucy Riall mette in evidenza gli episodi che hanno circondato le imprese dell'eroe dove i fatti reali si sono mescolati con un cumulo imponente di invenzioni e leggende. Così avvenne per le sue battaglie, così per la sua vita sentimentale. Corrado Augias, "Il Venerdì di Repubblica" Ha anticipato persino Che Guevara: non solo nel mettere a soqquadro pezzi dell'America Latina, ma soprattutto nel costruire il mito del ribelle romantico capace di legittimare l'affermazione di una nazione e di un regime. Lo sostiene la storica Lucy Riall in questo libro su Garibaldi che non è un'ulteriore biografia ma un saggio vivace, documentato e appassionato su come si costruisce un'immagine politica. Salvatore Carrubba, "Il Sole 24 Ore" Era uomo fuori dall'ordinario, Giuseppe Garibaldi: capo carismatico, rivoluzionario entusiasta, idealista che non si lasciò corrompere dal successo e dalla fama. Da morto, il potere lo trasformò in un mito, un 'santo laico' da manipolare per suscitare il consenso e l'entusiasmo delle masse popolari. Con ogni mezzo. In che modo Garibaldi divenne 'Garibaldi'? quando? e, soprattutto, perché? Lucy Riall racconta il primo emblematico caso di creazione pubblica di un eroe, concepito, costruito e promosso per divenire un simbolo.

L'invenzione di un eroe

Valeria P. Babini

Chiara Beccalossi

Bringing together an interdisciplinary group of scholars, this volume explores nineteenth-century Italian sexualities from a variety of viewpoints, illuminating in particular personal and political relationships, same-sex desires, gender roles that defy societal norms, sexual behaviours of different classes and transnational encounters.

Italian Sexualities Uncovered, 1789-1914

Salvatore Lupo

Alessandro Portelli

Alessandro Barbero

Alberto Mario Banti

Emilio Gentile

Andrea Graziosi

Alessandra Tarquini

Anna Foa

Raccontare la storia attraverso i romanzi riserva molte sorprese...Con Guerra e pace, La capanna dello zio Tom, Madame Bovary, Il Gattopardo, Arcipelago Gulag, Tropico del Cancro, Il partigiano Johnny, Se non ora, quando?, Il padrino, nove storici ci fanno viaggiare nel passato in compagnia di grandi testi letterari.

Come la letteratura racconta la storia

Romanzi nel tempo

Silvana Patriarca

What was the appeal and the tropes of national-patriotic discourse in nineteenth-century Italy? How did Romanticism intersect with nationalist politics? Why did a young man or woman become a patriot, join a nationalist movement and, if necessary, fight and die for the cause? By addressing these and other questions, the innovative essays of this collection provide fresh and topical perspectives on a central period in modern Italian history. Beside confronting the narrative of 'Risorgimento', its gendered tropes, and the actual experiences of men and women, the authors approach neglected areas of investigation on the Risorgimento - from the relationship between religion and the nation to the connections with the issue of empire and the aspirations of other peoples in the Mediterranean region. An important contribution to our understanding of Italian and more generally European nationalism, this volume also enlightens current discussions about the role of patriotism and the nature of nationalism in present-day Italy.

Lucy Riall

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