Bourbons versus Garibaldi. Something to think about over tea.

This was a really interesting piece, but I wonder if both the central, apparently competing claims can be simultaneously true. There can be no doubt that the North required the resources of the whole peninsula, including the South, to help resist the Austrians and set up the nation-state. Whether this was “cynical” or “statesmanlike” is where the different appears. Equally, bands of brigands can also be legitimate expressions of local disaffection with the “urban centre” and sources of identity and pride – whilst also being brutal thugs and criminals. The Risorgimento was neither inherently a “good” or “bad” period and I am unsure what merit there is for either revisionists or traditionalists to present it in these terms. But that seems to be the way the culture wars in history are heading.

It is the nature of things that the prosperity of national regions will not be equally distributed. The poorer region’s citizens will look for reasons why they are worse off outside factors of geography or regional character and will seek to blame the more prosperous region for their own less successful state.

In these circumstances they will be ripe for propagandist versions of history to confirm their prejudices and there will be revisionist historians happy to supply a false narrative to pander to those prejudices. The historians may be motivated by the money to be made by peddling a prejudicial version of history or a neo-Marxist desire to subvert the official history and hence the state and culture itself or a happy combination of both or even the motive attributed by the author – the desire to subvert the state in favour of some larger entity such as the concept of Europe as a state or a global state.

No mention of the Mafia which developed as an organisation countering the growing control of Sicily exerted by the new nation state of Italy?
It’s funny how the Neo-Bourbonists ignore how their sentiments are matched in the North of Italy where many wish that the South of Italy would go its own way and stop being a burden on the North. This sentiment was represented by its own political party, La Lega del Nord.

Victimhood, the highest state to which mankind can aspire

Good article by one of my favorite commentators on the life of an expat in Italia. Thank you Tim.
I was taught the lesson of good and evil in History by a leftist Jesuit in Grad School. There is no right or wrong in History, he said, only horrible examples.

The 430,000 sq miles for the Kingdom of 2 Sicilies is way way off. All of Italy today comprises about 116,000 sq miles.

A very interesting article. While I dont begrudge the Italian state per se (no skin in the game) it does seem even from the article that the south was conquered by the north and then suffered a breakdown of law and order that had been present under the old (ancien) regime. Perhaps I am reading it wrong but it does lend credence to secessionist forces if the Italian state was imposed by force in the beginning. The same is true of the America revolutionary war or Prussian unification – ordinary people finding themselves waking up one day as members of a new state created by force. Very unlike the union of crowns in the UK (100 years of unofficial union before formal adoption).

I see it as a cautionary tale for the reparations movement in America.

“Africa comincia a Roma” or Africa begins in Rome.

In so many contemporary conflicts, the feeling that one is on the “right side of history”, seems to justify a wilful blindness.
Certainly one of the most obnoxious phrases doing the rounds at the moment.
Very interesting piece on a subject about which I’m shamefully ignorant. Parks is a huge service to Italian translation, too. If you ever find yourself reading a book originally published in Italian, odds are it’s Parks who’s done the traduzione (if it isn’t Weaver, that is).

History is complex and when you dig into the different perspectives and detailed facts it’s never quite as clear cut as the myths we grew up with.
Is that a problem or just indicative of how far we have come in self confidence that we can discuss and debate these issues, and thus a source of pride?
That does not mean counter narratives shouldn’t undergo serious scrutiny and be called out if weakly based. Twaddle must be labelled so. But we also risk not learning the true lessons from history by over-simplification.

Many people on the far left get their kicks from demolishing patriotic heroes. See, for example, the toppling of Abraham Lincoln’s statues in Portland. I don’t know why they do this but it’s obviously not driven by scholarship. Indeed it often involves a gross distortion of the historical record. Perhaps they have ‘dad issues.’

The late A.J.P.T Taylor described Garibaldi as: “the only admirable figure in modern history”.*

(* Possibly in one of his famous TV Lectures in the late 60’s.)