|
"A book of originality and depth. In a meticulously researched and argued study, Isabella shows how international in reach the Risorgimento was and the extent to which political ideas about the nation were formed in a constant conversation between foreigners and Italians, between exiles from Italy and intellectuals in their host countries. In the process, he offers us a more positive view of the Risorgimento than the one often advanced." - Lucy Riall, Times Literary Supplement "What emerges is the European and modern face of the Risorgimento as an integral part of the great ideological and political currents of the time...thus it transpires that the ultimate, specifically liberal outcome of the Risorgimento has deeper roots
than had been thought...a serious and important book, written with both passion and thoughtful conviction." - Giuseppe Galasso, Corriere della Sera "Isabella's analytical approach to the intersecting histories of exile, liberalism, and nationalism offers valuable new insights into the transnational exchanges and conflicts that shaped influential strands of early nineteenth-century Italian thought." - American Historical Review "Historians, scholars in comparative politics, and political theorists...will find Risorgimento in Exile a compelling intellectual history and case study with ranging application in the study of revolutionary liberalism and transnational systems." - Nation and Nationalism "An important
contribution to a growing historiography engaged with rethinking Italian modernity...Broadly conceived, Isabella furnishes a sort of genealogy of nineteenth-century liberalism and nationalism; more particularly, he offers a view of the Italian participation in this process and insists that the earliest Risorgimento thinkers generated a dialectical synthesis of both Enlightenment and Romantic thought." - Journal of Modern Italian Studies "This is a truly global history of the early nineteenth century, which brings together events in Italy, Greece, northwestern Europe and Latin America in a completely novel way." - Chris Bayly, University of Cambridge "This is an impressive case study of the intellectual development of Italian exiles in
the period 1815-35, ambitiously placing them in a transnational, even world context. In the field of Risorgimento history, it breaks new ground in reassessing pre-Mazzini activism and its impact on later generations. In the field of post-Napoleonic Europe, it provides a methodology for exploring diverse aspects of the anti-Metternich discourse and how those strands were intertwined together: it will be essential reading for historians of this period. Based on an impressive command of sources in French and Spanish (as well as the author's native Italian) the work also has a broader resonance for any historian wishing to consider transnational intellectual currents, their possibilities and limits, and even offers lessons for the present-day European Union. The quality of writing and the
breadth of research in this work make it a real scholarly achievement." - Gladstone Prize Committee "This important and tightly argued book...is a welcome addition to a growing body of historiography that is rewriting the history of the Risorgimento... A feat that is rarely found in first books." - Silvana Patriarca, Storia del pensiero economico.
|