Giuseppe Mazzini

4 Key excerpts on "Giuseppe Mazzini"

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  Europe, 1859

  In the Ebb and Flow of Modernity

  • Arthur Haberman(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Oldenbourg

    (Publisher)

  31

  Metternich and others regarded Mazzini at this time as the most important revolutionary in all of Europe. He re-launched Young Italy in 1839 and was involved in a number of schemes opposing outside authority on the Italian peninsula.

  Mazzini’s most prominent involvement came as a result of the uprisings of 1848. In Rome, Pope Pius IX fled the city, and in 1849 Mazzini led the short-lived Roman Republic in a government that was regarded as capable and efficient. The French helped to restore Pius IX to his throne and the pope, thought to have liberal tendencies when he was elevated to the papacy in 1846, became the Roman pontiff most opposed to all of modernity until his death in 1878 ended the longest reign in papal history.

  Mazzini’s reputation was only furthered by his efforts in 1848 – 49, but again he went into exile and organized a series of conspiracies in favour of Italian independence from abroad. He was the touchstone for many conspirators and actors, and it is agreed that his contribution to Italian unity and independence was necessary for it to happen.

  Necessary, but not sufficient. In 1858 and 1859 Cavour in Piedmont and Garibaldi from the south began the wars that would lead to an Italy united in 1870. Mazzini realized his dream, though others played parts that an exile could not perform.

  Mazzini wrote a great deal, but he was not a systematic thinker who would develop a fully coherent philosophy in the manner of many nineteenth century thinkers, including Mill, Marx, and Darwin in the England in which all four resided. Mazzini’s writings hark back to the Romantic era and are in the tradition of the idealist position out of which early nationalist philosophy developed.

  As well, his work sometimes looks forward. His appeal is often emotional, presaging the twentieth century when politics began to be seen as far different from a simple rational calculation of what is in one’s best interest. The nationalism he espoused cut quickly to matters of identity, community, desire, and emotion.

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  Britain, Ireland and the Italian Risorgimento

  • N. Carter(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  8 From the late 1830s onwards Mazzini cultivated a network of contacts among London’s radical and literary fraternity who provided essential backing for his many campaigns, raising much needed funds and facilitating his access to both the mainstream and radical press.

  The years 1848 and 1849 were crucial for Mazzini. In the short term, he secured popular recognition of his vision and leadership, but his rise to power was all too brief and, after the fall of Rome in July 1849, he was exiled once again. He found a safe haven in Switzerland where he successfully relaunched his journal Italia del Popolo and spent a few weeks in England in the summer of 1850 to raise essential funds for the European refugees. Although he expected his exile from Italy to be short-lived, events dictated otherwise, and after February 1851, London became his permanent home. Once again, he turned to a small group of British friends for support, most notably the radical Joseph Cowen junior, the Chartist leader George Julian Harney and the engraver William Linton, who were all connected to the world of journalism as editors, writers or proprietors, and deeply committed to the republican cause. Individually and collectively, as friends who shared the same political ideals, they helped Mazzini to promote Italian nationalism beyond the privileged inner circle of London’s intelligentsia. This study will critically appraise the radical journals which they published between 1848 and 1855: the Democratic Review (1849–50), Red Republican (1850), English Republic (1851–5) and Northern Tribune (1854–5). While these publications never attained anything approaching the mass circulation rates of either the Northern Star or Reynolds ’s Miscellany ,9

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  Prime Movers

  • Ferdinand Mount(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Simon & Schuster UK

    (Publisher)

  What exactly did this mean? Mazzini spelled it out in uncompromising terms: ‘I feel ready to welcome, without any fear, any change in the European map which will arise from the spontaneous general manifestation of a whole people’s mind as to the group to which it feels naturally, not only by language, but by traditions, by geography, by tendencies, to belong.’ (Mack Smith, p. 154)

  Any change? That was quite a proposition if you looked at Europe, or any other continent, with its jumble of languages, allegiances, races and religions – and not least its disputed border territories. Such a deliberate upheaval would surely be devastating, unpredictable and bloody, as indeed it turned out to be.

  Mazzini took up his belief in the central importance of nationhood very early in his adult life, and he cherished it to the end, but in the broadest and most generous terms. It was not simply that Italy deserved to be united and independent, preferably as a republic. It was that all other peoples deserved the same fulfilment. Alongside Young Italy, Mazzini set up, or tried to, Young Germany, Young Greece, Young Spain, Young Russia, Young Switzerland, Young Ukraine, Young Turkey, Young Austria, and even Young Argentina (though 5,000 subscribers in Buenos Aires and Montevideo preferred to join Young Italy). These were in his mind’s eye to be the preliminaries to and props of Young Europe, which got going in 1834.

  In The Duties of Man , published first in a string of articles from the 1840s on and collected in book form in 1860, he summarized his belief in a simple form designed for the general reader. It was hugely popular, went through over a hundred editions and was translated into twenty languages. It was of course banned in Piedmont.

  The outlook was exhilarating: ‘Natural divisions, the innate spontaneous tendencies of the peoples will replace the arbitrary division sanctioned by bad governments. The map of Europe will be remade. The Countries of the People will rise, defined by the voice of the free, upon the ruins of the Countries of Kings and privileged castes. Between these Countries there will be harmony and brotherhood.’ (Duties , p. 52)

  Yes, there might be a few little local difficulties here and there, but not in his homeland. ‘To you who have been born in Italy, God has allotted, as if favouring you specially, the best-defined country in Europe. In other lands, marked by more uncertain or more interrupted limits, questions may arise which the pacific vote of all will one day solve, but which have cost, and will yet perhaps cost, tears and blood; in yours, no.’ (Duties

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  Hindutva and Violence

  V. D. Savarkar and the Politics of History

  • Vinayak Chaturvedi(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • SUNY Press

    (Publisher)

  There is no full description of Mazzini’s political life, nor a comprehensive exploration of his thought. In fact, the introduction does not even discuss the contents of the essays in the translated volume. Savarkar offers a general overview of Mazzini’s thought to establish a connection with local context in the Marathi reader. At another level, the process of establishing connections with Mazzini’s politics provided a rationale for Savarkar’s own activities: the convergence between Mazzini’s conceptualisations and political praxis provided a template for Savarkar. Mazzini’s formation of Young Italy inspired Savarkar to form the Abhinav Bharat Society, and also to take up Mazzini’s argument that Italy’s independence and unification were a direct result of the contributions of Young Italy. He was particularly interested in Mazzini’s description of the strategies necessary for Italian independence: “I am preparing a two-pronged plan to secure the help of Young Italy. Education and war training would support the war, and the war would support education.” 99 From Mazzini it was possible to learn that Young Italy functioned like a secret society in the struggle against foreign rule, educating youth primarily about the four stages of independence: freedom, equality, national unification, and rule by the people. A second duty was to prepare the young for a holy war, using guerrilla tactics when necessary. The goal was not simply to win independence, it was to stay united after the war with the aim of achieving “people’s rule” as a republican form of government. 100 While Savarkar provided a rationale for translating Mazzini’s book, he did not offer an explanation for the specific texts that he translated from the six volumes of Life and Writings

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