Re-imagining Democracy 18th-19th Centuries

Mediterranean states are often thought to have 'democratised' only in the post-war era, as authoritarian regimes were successively overthrown. On its eastern and southern shores, the process is still contested. Re-imagining Democracy looks back to an earlier era, the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and argues it was this era when some modern version of 'democracy' in the region first began.

By the 1860s, representative regimes had been established throughout southern Europe, and representation was also the subject of experiment and debate in Ottoman territories. Talk of democracy, its merits and limitations, accompanied much of this experimentation - though there was no agreement as to whether or how it could be given stable political form.

Re-imagining Democracy assembles experts in the history of the Mediterranean, who have been exploring these themes collaboratively, to compare and contrast experiences in this region, so that they can be set alongside better-known debates and experiments in North Atlantic states. States in the region all experienced some form of subordination to northern 'great powers'. In this context, their inhabitants had to grapple with broader changes in ideas about state and society while struggling to achieve and maintain meaningful self-rule at the level of the polity, and self-respect at the level of culture.

Innes and Philip highlight new research and ideas about a region whose experiences during the 'age of revolutions' are at best patchily known and understood, as well as to expand understanding of the complex and variegated history of democracy as an idea and set of practices.

L’articolo esplora la rete di relazioni politiche che si sviluppò intorno al democratico meridionale
Casimiro De Lieto, dai primi scambi epistolari  - nel 1833 - sino alle cospirazioni per la liberazione
del Mezzogiorno del 1854-56. Attraverso l’analisi della leadership di De Lieto, la circolazione di
idee, programmi e immagini fra questi e i corrispondenti e le  trasformazioni della rete, l’articolo
intende contribuire allo studio delle rivoluzioni del XIX secolo nel Mezzogiorno d’Italia da un
duplice punto di vista: le motivazioni soggettive alla base delle scelte politiche; il contributo delle
relazioni interindividuali e dei gruppi territoriali alle rivoluzioni. La ricerca attinge al fondo del
patriota custodito presso il Museo Centrale del Risorgimento (Roma).

"Correspondence and Political Networks. Casimiro De Lieto's Network Between Italian Mezzogiorno and Roman Republic"
The article investigates the political network of the democratic, Southern Italian patriot Casimiro
De Lieto, starting with from his early epistolary exchanges – in 1833- to the conspirancies for the
liberation of Mezzogiorno in 1854-56. By analisyng the leadership of De Lieto, the circulation of
ideas, programmes and images between him and his correspondents and changes in his network, the
article aims at offering a contribution to the study of the XIX revolutions in Southern Italy. This
research  is  utilizing  two  approaches:  the  subjective  motivation  for  political  choice;    the
interpersonal exchanges and territorial groups contributing to revolution. The investigation draws
upon De Lieto’s personal fond in the Central Museum of Risorgimento (Rome).

The crisis in Ukraine is an unprecedented OPPORTUNITY. Never before has there been such a global opposition to psychotic “political” intention than the global righteous indignation expressed relative to Putin’s psychotic unprovoked attack on Ukraine. Experiencing such a crescendo of humanitarian solidarity is extremely rare and fleeting, and it is only possible because of the technological Fourth Estate (the electromagnetic media-field) that has framed the political issues involved. There can be no question that the current crisis in Ukraine has global significance, and media-framing of this fact has been compelling. However, the technology of “psychological framing” with information and communication technologies (ICTs) has advanced much further than longstanding advertising techniques of coercion through target-market identification that still holds the media captive. Science has now established the fact that human perceptions of ontological “reality”—in a context of the electromagnetic (EM) unified field of quantum field theory (QFT)—have the structure of NARRATIVE ARCHITECTURE.  In other words, reality has dramatic structure.  “An infinity of energetic resonances cavort in the form of “personal/collective dramas”. Good dramatic structure was defined by Plato who established the “framework” (character, exposition, lysis) that is a problem-solving formula that widely in use (Lakoff, G, 2008, 2002; Jacoby, 1973; Jung, C, 1933). The salient feature of Plato’s dramatic architecture is “plot” which unfolds from “exposition” (statement of a story’s problem) to lysis (resolution of the story’s problem) with adherence to “premise” (Schafer, SB, 2007; Glassner, A, 2004, p. 69).

The significance of this fact is that with the emergent media-age of virtual illusion, humans have the power to frame reality with the technological media—agency that should be attuned to FIRST CAUSE INTENTION (FCI). Proof of this fact can be stipulated because of the existence of the media-field that exemplifies this human creativity. What is not currently “known”, or yet deduced, is that this human creation—like a Jungian dream—can provide “meaningful insight” as to both human and divine PURPOSE. The media-field is structurally framed to accomplish meaningful insight about FIRST CAUSE INTENTION (FCI).  That divinely inspired FCI exists for the purpose of creating “responsible embodied transduction of EM energies” into an essentially humanitarian resonant quality in the dimension of material form.  The virtual media-field is the best example of this “embodied” purpose, but the toxic state of the media reflects a serious failure of responsibility for creating FCI COHERENT ENTRAINMENT (universal harmony).

Humanitarian craftsmen now have the responsibility to “intuit” FCI and to devise the “blueprint” (frame) for a Global Culture of Conscience (Soul). Currently, the media is structured to lead us into entropy (death), so change must be immediate. When mediated rhetorical dynamics are translated into the dynamics of physics and “coherent entrainment”, the DNA of First Cause media-framing becomes very specific and quantifiable. In-order to optimize the fleeting “opportunity” presented by the Ukrainian struggle, humanitarians must consciously accept the dynamics of EM coherent entrainment with the planetary Soul.

The essay focuses on the Calabrian radical group who had a leading role in the 1848 revolution in Naples, as one of the possible key to interpreting the Neapolitan revolution itself. Moving from the assumption that the subversive choice and its specific contents resulted in more complex interactions, the investigation wants to track the social background, the ideological references, the cultural and literary influences of 25 patriots whose political experiences are detectable in the period considered and who would have been protagonist in the 1848 revolution from 1830 (when the patriot Benedetto Musolino began to develop the ideological base of the sect I figliuoli della Giovine Italia) until 1847. The analysis draws upon both edited documents written by the Calabrian patriots and the coeval memorialists, and the primary sources in the Central Museum of Risorgimento, the State Archive of Naples, the Private Archive of Domenico Mauro, the State Archive of Reggio Calabria. This article forms part of a wider research theme on the radical movement and the political mobilization in Naples during the 1848 revolution. My doctoral thesis researches have been conducted on the political demonstrations during the 1848 revolution in Naples. From this investigation it has clearly emerged how much the radical fringe of the liberal faction acquired and increased popular consensus in opposition to the various constitutional governments, as it succeeded in both managing new tools of communication than impressing political influence through demonstrations, newspapers and flyers, and also succeeded in spreading its propaganda among institutions and public spaces such as universities, public administrations, and the National Guard which was already agitated by internal conflicts that became more of political nature during the 1848 revolution. Therefore, to be able to deepen the origins of the 1848 radical propaganda in Naples and the reasons of its success among the different sections of city population, it is necessary to survey the long formation of the militant group that actually drove the actions in the streets during the 1848 riots – a group formed in prevalence by militants of Calabrian origins, coming from the provinces of Cosenza, Catanzaro, and Reggio Calabria. In that respect, I have identified 25 patriots, whose political story is in fact traced in the period 1831-1848, since their crucial actions took part in the cornerstone events of the southern political democratic process: the affiliation to the sect of "The sons of young Italy" founded by the Calabrian republican Benedetto Musolino from Pizzo Calabro; the participation in the insurrection attempts in Calabria, in the years 1837, 1843-44, and 1847; the contribution to the urban demonstrations in the capital city during the 1848 riots; the involvement in the Neapolitan events of May 15; and, finally, the support to the revolutionary committees that were formed in Calabrian cities between May and June of the same 1848. KEY WORDS: Naples 1848, European revolutions of 1848, revolution, Kingdom of two Sicilies, Calabrian radicals, republicanism, collective biography. Il saggio prende in esame il gruppo dei radicali calabresi che durante la rivoluzione del 1848 fu protagonista della mobilitazione a Napoli, come una delle possibili chiavi di interpretazione della rivoluzione stessa. Muovendo dall’assunto che la scelta eversiva e i suoi specifici contenuti furono risultato della complessa interazione di molteplici variabili, lo studio mira a ricostruire il profilo sociale, i riferimenti ideologici e le esperienze politico-culturali e letterarie di 25 militanti dal 1830 (anno in cui il patriota Benedetto Musolino formulava i riferimenti ideologici della setta I figliuoli della Giovine Italia) al 1847. L’analisi attinge sia alla documentazione edita prodotta dagli stessi calabresi e dai memorialisti coevi, sia dai carteggi privati e le fonti di polizia custoditi presso il Museo Centrale del Risorgimento, l’Archivio di Stato di Napoli, L’Archivio privato di Domenico Mauro e l’Archivio di Stato di Reggio Calabria. PAROLE CHIAVE: Parole chiave: Napoli 1848, rivoluzioni europee del 1848, rivoluzione, Regno delle Due Sicilie, radicali calabresi, repubblicanesimo, biografia collettiva.

That the French Revolution was the product of a vast anti-religious conspiracy was a commonplace of counterrevolutionary writing already in 1790. However, it was only after the beginning of the European wars in 1792 that Catholic intellectuals explicitly started conceiving the fight against revolutionary France as a war of religion. This paper traces the transnational development of this idea, from its origins in the Spain of the War of the Pyrenees to its re-elaboration in Francisco Gustà’s Critical Essay on the Crusades, published in Italy in 1794. A Catalan ex-Jesuit, Gustà exhorted Pope Pius VI to launch a modern crusade against revolutionary France. A close analysis of this text and of its reception reveals how the preaching of a modern crusade led to the emergence of some of the defining features of Catholic conservatism: the myth of medieval Christendom as an alternative to revolutionary modernity; the role of the pope—the only authority who could legitimately launch a crusade—as a supranational leader; and the need for mass mobilization in defense of religion. Thus, this paper argues that what characterized Catholic conservatism from its very inception was the inextricable entanglement of modern means and anti-modern ideals.

SOMMARIO: L'articolo si sviluppa in tre parti. Nella prima si affronta il tema della coesistenza della doppia patria, della doppia fedeltà, del doppio senso di appartenenza, borbonica e ital-iana, nel Regno di Napoli fino al 1848. Dopo la rivoluzione del 1848 l'aspirazione alla nazionalità italiana si disgiunge dalla fedeltà alla dinastia borbonica. La seconda parte è dedicata all'anal-isi critica della storiografia sul '48 europeo compiuta da Giuseppe Galasso. Nella terza parte è analizzata la tendenza interpretativa più recente sullo sviluppo di un movimento radicale durante la congiuntura quarantottesca napoletana. ABSTRACT: The article in three parts proposes a reflection on the revolution of 1848 in Naples. In the first part the focus is the living together of the Bourbon fidelity and the Italian nation in Neapolitan Kingdom until 1848. After this time " Neapolitan Nation " and " Italian Nation " were different, opposite senses of belonging. The second part is a critical analysis of the historiogra-phy on the European Revolution of 1848 made by Giuseppe Galasso. In the late part I discuss some recent studies about the rising of a radical movement in Neapolitan Revolution.

The paper discusses the political thought of Cesare Balbo (1789–1853), a leading Risorgimento moderate liberal and politician, in the context of the efforts by the Piedmontese political elite to support and legitimise the constitutional regime introduced by King Charles Albert in 1848. Revising current interpretations of Risorgimento moderate liberalism as backward and provincial, it seeks to locate the political thought of Balbo and his colleagues at the heart of contemporary European, and particularly French, debates regarding liberty and aristocracy. In particular, it argues that the views of Balbo and more broadly Piedmontese moderate liberals on centralisation, the importance of a social elite to defend freedom, and equalisation, were conversant with the ideas of Guizot, Chateaubriand, Burke and Tocqueville. Their harsh condemnation of republican virtue, on the other hand, rendered their liberalism peculiar in the Italian context, where Tuscan moderate liberals continued to resort to the language of civic humanism after 1848 to defend their political and social model.

The article discusses the way in which liberals conceived the relationship between freedom of the press, political liberty, and the Risorgimento. It argues that while all Risorgimento patriots advocated the introduction of freedom of the press, and saw it as a precondition for the success of their programmes, they also held different views on its applicability. While early liberals like Giuseppe Pecchio and Ugo Foscolo, in tune with the ideas of Benjamin Constant, were in favour of the largest possible freedom of speech, Italian moderates were less convinced of the benefits of an unchecked proliferation of political media. In line with the ideas of the French doctrinaires, Cesare Balbo, Vincenzo Gioberti, Terenzio Mamiani and Carlo Farini insisted on the pedagogical role of the press, and on the need to prevent it from becoming an instrument in the hands of democratic leaders and demagogues, one that would lead either to the proliferation of factions or to the establishment of a dictatorship of the majority.

The revolutionary wave of the 1790s subverted long-standing balances of power and forced European intellectuals to rethink the geopolitical arrangement of the continent. Some Italian patriots, while advocating the creation of a unitary state south of the Alps, primarily understood the revolution as a transnational phenomenon and thus regarded the republicanization of the Peninsula as part and parcel of a wider geopolitical transformation, centered around the Mediterranean Basin. This paper deals with the writings of two of these patriots, the Roman Enrico Michele L'Aurora (circa 1760-?) and the Neapolitan Matteo Galdi (1765-1821), who were both in exile in Milan between 1796 and 1799. According to them, the Mediterranean shores were not just peripheral spaces that were being involved in a transformation originated elsewhere. This is not to say that they did not recognize the centrality of France to the whole revolutionary process, but they also viewed the creation of the so-called "sister republics" in the Italian Peninsula as the first step towards a broad geopolitical transformation. From this perspective, the Mediterranean Basin was at the very heart of the revolution. Placing the south of Europe at the center of the emergence of the new post-revolutionary world, L'Aurora and Galdi challenged a long-established hierarchy of civilization that throughout the eighteenth century had defined the very concept of Europe in antithesis to what was regarded as the uncivilized other-the East, but also the European South itself. In their views, it was the South that would eventually revolutionize and regenerate the North. So, while rethinking the revolution as an inherently transnational phenomenon rather than a French-centered event radiating its influence abroad, L'Aurora and Galdi redefined the asymmetrical relationships between European centers and peripheries, and at the same time, they put forward a new form of "cosmopolitan patriotism," which could coexist with the principle of nationality.

After the arrival of the French army south of the Alps in 1796, the entire Italian peninsula was republicanized and the patriots struggled to build popular consensus for the new regimes. In the course of this struggle, the depiction of the stereotypical image of the aristocratic enemy proved to be one of the most powerful tools at their disposal.
Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, my paper analyzes how the patriots created and used this image in the speeches they gave during the meetings of political societies in the Cisalpine Republic. In the eyes of the patriots, the aristocrat was not a member of a specific social class, nor was the term a synonym for noble. Rather, the aristocrat was depicted as the specular opposite of the virtuous patriot. Since he refused to embrace the new ideas, he was considered as the embodiment of the vices that had animated the ancien régime. Thus, whoever rejected or opposed the new regime, even a peasant, could be accused of being an aristocrat. Labeling people as aristocrats became an effective way to stigmatize and exclude them from the social fabric. Even their belonging to the human race was called into question, since they were usually described as monsters, animals, and cannibals.
Evoking the figure of the aristocrat during their speeches, the patriots were able to raise feelings of contempt, hatred, fear, and even conspiracy obsession in their audiences, thus strengthening the loyalty to the republic. Although eventually the patriots failed to stabilize the new regime, my paper sheds new light on the connections between political emotions, revolutionary rhetoric, and popular propaganda.

The production of imagined geographies is widely understood as a tool of colonial power. This paper, analyzing the writings of pro-revolutionary Italian patriots in the 1790s, argues that imagined geographies can also be used to subvert existing hierarchies and to renegotiate the relationship between centers and peripheries. Throughout the eighteenth century, European identity had been defined in antithesis to what was regarded as the uncivilized other—the Orient, but also the European South. After the French army invaded Italy in 1796, Italian patriots, who advocated the creation of a democratic republic in the Peninsula, started to reconsider the role of Italy and the Mediterranean Basin in the revolutionary process. They argued that it was in the Mediterranean that the Revolution would fight its most important battle. This was, of course, the battle for the liberty of navigation and commerce—against the British monopoly of trade—but also the battle of the “peoples of the South” against the “peoples of the North.” Challenging a long-established hierarchy of civilization, Italian patriots argued for the superiority of the South over the North. The peoples of the South were described as the promoters of international cooperation, freedom, and peace, whereas the peoples of the North were characterized by aggressive and exploitative attitudes. Both South and North, for them, were not geographical but cultural definitions—in fact, the South spanned from the Ottoman Empire to the Netherlands, including Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal. Producing such a new imagined geography, Italian patriots reconceptualized the Revolution as a worldwide event that would eventually produce the emergence of a new peaceful global order based on the “southern spirit.” The creation of a worldwide federation of nation-states—including an Italian republic—would naturally follow.

The revolution of 1848 was a crucial step for the apprenticeship in the democratic practices in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Historians have been dedicating scarce attention to this theme, since they consider political life in Southern Italy as a prerogative of a very small group of capital citizens.
This book deals with the political mobilization in Naples during 1848 and aims at challenging the idea of the Italian Mezzogiorno as peripherical in the European revolutionary context. To this end, two aspects of the process are focussed and explored: first, the street politics, which played a key role in the making of public opinion, i.e. the demonstrations, the petitions, the sociabilité in the coffeehouses and the popular figures; second, the radical group which tried to lead the political mobilization in the Bourbon capital. The latter, in addition, has been deep investigated in its cultural, ideological and socio-economical aspects with the ambition to explain its contribution to the realization of the much more widespread “imaginaries”and istances of the Neapolitan revolution.

RESUMEN El trabajo analiza las polémicas en torno a los usos del concepto de democracia durante el proceso de Independencia chilena, entre 1808 y 1833. Mediante una aproximación desde la historia conceptual se examinan los debates y diversas valoraciones de la democracia en sus diferentes articulaciones semánticas con otros conceptos (como pueblo, libertad e igualdad) así como con una serie de problemas propios de la constitución de un régimen de modernidad política, en especial, la delimitación de los marcos de participación ciudadana. ABSTRACT The paper analyzes the controversies about the uses of the concept of democracy during the Chilean Independence (1808-1833). Through an approach from the conceptual history, the article analyzes the discussions and various assessments of democracy in

The revolution of Naples of 1848.  Sources and methods for the study of political participation

The essay reflects on the political mobilization in Naples during the revolution of 1848.  The historiography on the Risorgimento has been dedicating scarce attention to this theme, considering Neapolitan politics street lacking of a massive popular participation. 
With  the aim to retrieve the large extent of the Neapolitan “square”, and to explain how it was able to influence the revolutionary government, this study focuses on the real meaning of the word “participation” as perceived by the mid-nineteenth century observers. At first, the police registers, the coeval journals and memorials will be analyzed to demonstrate  how common opinion considered liberals or liberal supporters not only those who demonstrated and wrote of politics, but a larger part of the urban society traditionally considered as passive: the observers of the demonstrations, the readers of  liberal journals and people talking informally about the revolution in coffeehouses and  in the streets. At second, to show how many urban groups alien to the political debates were involved into the revolution and finally participate to it, the specific case of the national guard will be illustrated.

Il saggio riflette sulla mobilitazione politica a Napoli durante la rivoluzione del 1848. La storiografia sul Risorgimento ha dedicato scarsa attenzione al tema, considerando l'opinione pubblica della capitale borbonica, insieme alla mobilitazione politica e all'associazionismo che ne furono espressione, fenomeno quantitativamente circoscritto, privo di valore intellettuale e di scarso impatto istituzionale.
Allo scopo di dimostrare l'ampia politicizzazione dei napoletani e quanto essi fossero in grado di influenzare i governi rivoluzionari, questo studio vuole discutere il reale significato del termine "partecipazione", così come esso venne inteso dagli osservatori mediottocenteschi. In primo luogo, mediante l'analisi dei registri di polizia, di memorie e giornali coevi, si cercherà di evidenziare quanto i contemporanei considerassero liberali non soltanto coloro che scrivevano di politica sui giornali o aderivano alle manifestazioni, ma anche un'ampia porzione della società tradizionalmente considerata passiva: coloro che osservavano le dimostrazioni, coloro che leggevano i giornali liberali e quanti parlavano informalmente degli eventi rivoluzionari nei caffè e nelle strade. In secondo luogo, al fine di sottolinerae quanto gruppi urbani generalmente estranei alla politica furono coinvolti nella rivoluzione finendo per parteciparvi, sarà illustrato il caso della guardia nazionale.

L’articolo prende in esame il progetto di Costituzione inedito del democratico Casimiro De Lieto (Reggio Calabria 1803- Firenze 1874). De Lieto inviò le "Basi d’una Costituzione pel Napoletano" - questo il nome del documento-al ministro degli affari esteri Luigi Dragonetti Il 13 aprile del 1848, durante la rivoluzione napoletana, affinché il Regno delle Due Sicilie si dotasse di una Costituzione più avanzata sul piano dei diritti civili e politici rispetto a quella concessa dal sovrano il 10 febbraio dello stesso anno. Lo studio punta ad approfondire l’idea di democrazia che i democratici napoletani espressero durante la rivoluzione del 1848 . L’ambizione è quella di metterne in luce le diversità con il liberalismo nel Napoletano e di fornire gli elementi che consentano di contestualizzare la formazione tra i movimenti repubblicani e democratici in Europa.
Inside the Democratic Constitution. State, Economy and Religion in Casimiro De Lieto's unedited project
The article analyses the unedited Costitution project written by the democratic activist Casimiro De Lieto (Reggio Calabria 1803- Florence 1874). On 13th April 1848, De Lieto sent his “ Basi d’una Costituzione pel Napoletano” –this is how he named the document- to the Kingdom of Two Sicilies minister of Foreign Affairs Luigi Dragonetti, in order to ask for a more advanced Costitution than that granted by the King a few months before. The research aims at deepening the idea of democracy Southern Italian democrats shared during the 1848 revolution, by focussing on De Lieto’s project principles and rules. In particular, the study aims both at tracing the main differences between democrats and liberals in the Neapolitan context and at providing the basic elements for an analysis of Neapolitan democracy in the framework of the European republican movements.

The outbreak of the French Revolution marked the beginning of a new era of international relations. The legacy of Enlightenment cosmopolitanism and the emergence of the new revolutionary principle of popular sovereignty forced politicians and intellectuals all across Europe to rethink the political order of the continent and its relations with the Mediterranean Basin. This paper deals with the Euro-Mediterranean visions of two leading figures of the Italian patriotic movement during the so-called republican triennium (1796-99), Matteo Galdi (1765-1821) and Enrico Michele L’Aurora (ca 1760-?). Galdi envisioned the creation of a worldwide federal “republic of mankind,” whereas L’Aurora strongly advocated the creation of a European federation and of a European Congress. Exploring their published and unpublished works, this paper shows how both Galdi and L’Aurora merged Enlightenment cosmopolitanism with the new principle of nationality. The way they tried to combine these two elements reveals how they understood the revolution and the idea of nation themselves.

Resumen: Entre los diferentes símbolos del republicanismo español, las alegorías femeninas ocuparon un lugar preeminente, al convertirse en figuras rectoras de espacios y de prácticas sociales. Ese "peso simbólico" contrastaba con la realidad de una cultura política esencialmente androcéntrica, en la cual las mujeres padecían un manifiesto apartamiento de cualquier ámbito de decisión. El sesgo de género tenía su origen en el propio contexto social pero también en la socialización política diferenciada que vivían desde niñas. En ocasiones, hubo correligionarias que se vistieron de alegoría de la República y entonces, de algún modo, el plano simbólico y el real se entremezclaron.

"Il saggio analizza le indagini svolte nel Regno delle Due Sicilie sugli eventi rivoluzionari del 15 maggio 1848, riflettendo sui risultati separatamente conseguiti dall’ Alta Polizia e dall’inchiesta giudiziaria. Discutendo l’idea del sistema repressivo borbonico tramandata dagli scrittori liberali coevi, che descrissero indagini compromesse da abusi ed irregolarità, si provano a comprendere le ragioni politiche che realmente ostacolarono l’identificazione dei responsabili e, d’altra parte, la logica di perseguimento e controllo insita nelle istituzioni borboniche.

The essay analyses the investigations carried out in the Kingdom of Two Sicilies on the revolutionary events of the 15th May 1848, and reflects on both the results reached by the police and those ones obtained by the judicial inquiry. At the same time, arguing the idea of the bourbon repressive system handed down  by  the liberal coeval writers, who described investigations compromised by abuses and irregularities, the essay attempts to understand the whole of political reasons that actually prevented the identification of the responsible people as well as the logic of prosecution and control belonging to the bourbon institutions."

The establishment of representative government in Portugal implied the free participation of the citizenry in the formation of public opinion. The right to petition was initially understood as an individual form of participation, but soon it would be practiced through public gatherings, marches and other displays of the collective will of a multitude. Initially, most of those forms of popular participation were identified with riots and insurrections, but during the second half of the nineteenth century, the public meeting became institutionalized. This paper explores the process whereby political campaigns based on drafting petitions,
collecting signatures, and holding public meetings became a legitimate political form.

Patrizio napoletano, giureconsulto, reazionario militante dalla congiura dei Baccher ( 1799) e membro del governo controrivoluzionario napoletano del 1821, Giovanni Battista Vecchione (Pozzuoli, Napoli, 1757-1826) fu una delle personalità più incisive del legittimismo borbonico  a livello intellettuale, istituzionale e politico. La voce fornisce gli elementi per contestualizzarne l'attività e il pensiero nelle vicende del Regno di Napoli prima e del Regno delle due Sicilie poi.

This article reconsiders the Catholic reaction to the French Revolution, focusing on Nicola Spedalieri’s On the Rights of Man (1791) and on the debate that its publication sparked in Italy and beyond. The outbreak of the Revolution and the polarization of public opinion between the supporters of the new regime and its relentless opponents convinced Spedalieri, a well-reputed Catholic theologian, of the need to find a via media between these two extremes. Assuming the re-Christianization of the postrevolutionary world as his goal, Spedalieri argued that some aspects of revolutionary political culture were acceptable from a Catholic standpoint as long as the revolutionaries, in turn, agreed to abandon secularization and to uphold the traditional confessional organization of the state. It was not modernity itself, he claimed, that should be rejected, but secularization, for a different modernity from that conceived by the revolutionaries—a confessional modernity, combining revolutionary politics and confessional states—was possible. Far from gaining immediate acceptance, Spedalieri’s ideas were harshly criticized during the 1790s and then set aside by the triumph of reactionary Catholicism during the Restoration. However, they resurfaced later in the nineteenth century and ultimately played a decisive role in the development of the church’s attitudes toward modern culture, for they carved a path for Catholics to fight secularization from within and to reshape modernity accordingly.

Free readable version: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-intellectual-history/article/confessional-modernity-nicola-spedalieri-the-catholic-church-and-the-french-revolution-c17751800/95B7509A231CF7D6537DDE9DC9451585/share/a50487aa36b21cde9249f3d8fb3921c2eab4fef9

Il rapporto Mill-Tocqueville ha costituito da sempre una questione aperta e costantemente problematica sul versante degli studi milliani, più che di quelli tocquevilliani, e, più in generale, nei tentativi sistematici di elaborazione di una storia del pensiero liberale. Ancora Bobbio, nei capitoli centrali di Liberalismo e democrazia, individuava nel tema della «tirannia della maggioranza» il punto di convergenza tra le due ali del liberalismo europeo, quella più conservatrice e quella più radicale, rappresentate rispettivamente dallo storico francese e dal filosofo inglese; e precisava che, se «Tocqueville fu prima liberale che democratico», «Mill fu liberale e democratico», considerando «la democrazia, in particolare il governo rappresentativo, come lo sviluppo naturale e conseguente dei principi liberali», [...]

This book charts a transformation in how people thought about democracy in the North Atlantic region in the years between the American Revolution and the revolutions of 1848. In the mid-eighteenth century, ‘democracy’ was a word known only to literate publics; it was associated primarily with the ancient world, and had negative connotations: democracies were conceived to be unstable, warlike, and prone to mutate into despotisms. By the mid-nineteenth century, by contrast, democracy had become an important category for thinking about the modern world, and had passed into general use – though it was still not necessarily an approving term; in fact, there was much debate about whether democracy could achieve robust institutional form in advanced societies. In this book, an international cast of contributors shows how common trends worked through in four settings: the United States, France, Britain and Ireland, with special attention to the eras of the 1789 and 1848 revolutions. It is argued that ‘modern democracy’ was not invented in one place and then diffused elsewhere, but instead was the subject of parallel re-imaginings, as ancient ideas and examples were selectively invoked and reworked for modern use in different ways in different environments. The book significantly enhances our understanding of the diversity and complexity of our democratic inheritance.

This book charts a transformation in how people thought about democracy in the North Atlantic region in the years between the American Revolution and the revolutions of 1848. In the mid-eighteenth century, ‘democracy’ was a word known only to literate publics; it was associated primarily with the ancient world, and had negative connotations: democracies were conceived to be unstable, warlike, and prone to mutate into despotisms. By the mid-nineteenth century, by contrast, democracy had become an important category for thinking about the modern world, and had passed into general use – though it was still not necessarily an approving term; in fact, there was much debate about whether democracy could achieve robust institutional form in advanced societies. In this book, an international cast of contributors shows how common trends worked through in four settings: the United States, France, Britain and Ireland, with special attention to the eras of the 1789 and 1848 revolutions. It is argued that ‘modern democracy’ was not invented in one place and then diffused elsewhere, but instead was the subject of parallel re-imaginings, as ancient ideas and examples were selectively invoked and reworked for modern use in different ways in different environments. The book significantly enhances our understanding of the diversity and complexity of our democratic inheritance.

At the end of the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that the structural transformations that European societies were undergoing at the time were inextricably linked to the emergence of a new family model. In this paper, I shed light on the ways the idea of a correspondence between the structure of the family and the structure of society was formed in the eighteenth century. Of course, the family had long been used as a metaphor to describe the political community, but it was during the second half of the eighteenth century that intellectuals like Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Cesare Beccaria realized that the structure of the family mirrored the wider structure of society, and that the family itself could be deployed as a tool of social control. Thus, the critique of the traditional family started to be linked to the critique of the existing political order.  Enlightened intellectuals censured the abuses of paternal authority, which mirrored the misdeeds of the monarchs. At the same time, defending freedom of marriage and advocating the reform of inheritance laws, they reshaped the family into a community based on strong emotional ties rather than on economic interests, and on more equal relationships among family members. Such a family, long dreamed of by the intellectuals, suddenly became real in the 1790s as a result of the reforms passed by the r​evolutionary assemblies in France and in the European sister republics—and in particular in Italy between 1796 and 1799. It was in this context that, once the family had been reshaped, the family metaphor eventually became one of the discursive tools most frequently used to describe the nation.

il mestiere di storico Rivista della Società Italiana per lo Studio della Storia Contemporanea X / 2, 2018 viella SOCIETÀ ITALIANA PER LO STUDIO DELLA STORIA CONTEMPORANEA sede operativa c/o Dip. (carta) ISBN 978-88-3313-200-6 (e-book pdf ) ISBN 978-88-3313-199-3 (e-pub) Rivista semestrale, anno X, n. 2, 2018 Registrazione presso il Tribunale di Roma del 4/5

That the French Revolution was the product of a vast anti-religious conspiracy was a commonplace of counterrevolutionary writing already in 1790. However, it was only after the beginning of the European wars in 1792 that Catholic intellectuals explicitly started conceiving the fight against revolutionary France as a war of religion. This paper traces the transnational development of this idea, from its origins in the Spain of the War of the Pyrenees to its re-elaboration in Francisco Gustà’s Critical Essay on the Crusades, published in Italy in 1794. A Catalan ex-Jesuit, Gustà exhorted Pope Pius VI to launch a modern crusade against revolutionary France. A close analysis of this text and of its reception in the late 1790s reveals how the preaching of a modern crusade led to the emergence of some of the defining features of modern Catholic conservatism: the myth of medieval Christendom as an alternative to revolutionary modernity; the role of the pope—the only authority who could legitimately launch a crusade—as a supranational leader; and the need for mass mobilization in defense of religion.

In March 1791, Pope Pius VI officially condemned the French Revolution. However, the breach between Rome and Paris did not go uncontested. Some sectors of the Curia were afraid that the papal condemnation would produce a schism and urged a softer line. It was in this context that Nicola Spedalieri published his book "On the Rights of Man". While criticizing the religious policies of the French Constituent Assembly as the product of an anti-Christian conspiracy, Spedalieri accepted the basic principles of revolutionary public law, as the social contract and the right of revolution, and delineated a path of conciliation between Catholicism and the new regime. Arguing that civil society had to be grounded in religious basis, he called for the proclamation of Catholicism as the state religion. “On the Rights of Man” soon became a literary case and sparked a wide debate. Between 1792 and 1800, almost forty books were published either against or in defense of Spedalieri’s work. Spedalieri’s opponents praised his critique of the Revolution but advocated the divine right of the kings and the alliance of throne and altar, whether they attributed to the papacy a sort of primacy over temporal authorities or embraced regalist doctrines. On the contrary, most of Spedalieri’s supporters ended up embracing the new revolutionary order, while still emphasizing that it needed a religious foundation. Spedalieri’s work certainly allowed for a diverse range of interpretations, but it was crucial in putting the rethinking of the role of religion in society at the center of the ongoing political debate. Examining this debate, the paper argues that the age of revolution was not simply a period of secularization and that the emergence of modernity did not necessarily entail the displacement of religion from the public sphere.

Traditional religious beliefs played a major role during the revolutionary upheaval of the end of the eighteenth century. This paper analyzes how Italian pro-revolutionary Catholics reimagined the role of religion in the new post-revolutionary order, focusing on the cases of Niccolò Fava Ghisilieri, Cardinal Gregorio Barnaba Chiaramonti (later Pope Pius VII), and Gaetano Giudici. Fava Ghisilieri, a deputy at the Cispadane Constitutional Convention of 1797, advocated the proclamation of Catholicism as the state religion of the newborn Cispadane Republic. Chiaramonti argued that the state could be secular, but a republican society had necessarily to be based on Catholic moral teaching. Giudici, a Milanese Jansenist priest, while commenting on a draft divorce law in 1798, went even further and suggested that both state and society could be secular. These three cases reveal that the rethinking of the role played by religion in the state and society was crucial to the emergence of the modern post-revolutionary order.

The article analyses how nineteenth-century Spanish Democrats understood democracy, what were the issues at stake, how they were debated, and how political and social discourses evolved. It focuses on Democrats’ conceptions of citizenship, freedom, equality, sovereignty, political activity and the nation, as well as on their ideas on the most convenient form of government and organization of the State. It traces the process through which their original idea of democracy as an active and immediate exercise of power evolved into another centred on the control and limitation of power and the promotion of individual autonomy. It finally points out their holistic vision of society and their difficulty accepting a plurality of interests and parties, which had considerable influence on their political practice and their attempts at self-organization.