Volume 18 // A Unitary State and Its Difficult Start

This volume is dedicated to the first and tormented years of the Italian unitary history that go from the Expedition of the Thousand to the parliamentary “revolution” of 1876 and the rise to power of the Left wing with the first ministry of Deprestis. The work of historical reconstruction made by the authors is not limited to a deep analysis of political, diplomatic and military events, but goes much further offering the readers a passionate study of real tendencies of the population collective mentality and its evolution in terms of material, economical and cultural life. Thus, the exploration, like an excavation, gets deeper and goes beyond the appearance of the phenomenon of a vast social rebellion movement called the Southern Brigandage which gathered together all the Southern peasantry disillusioned after the liberation and the first signal of the “Southern question” coming to life. These difficult first years of the Kingdom are characterized by the dualism of the main political currents (the moderate and the democratic ones), reflected, like in a mirror, in the process of the unification and prolonged with the parliamentary dispute. This dualism is getting particularly acute in the social elements of the North and South, more and more convinced to be two different and separate worlds. On such a basis, the volume depicts a cultural portrait of Italy in those years when science and research development is accompanied with secular philosophical materialist and positivist thought. In the literary field, this mindset produces a contradictory, but new sensibility, from Lombard Scapigliatura to the great season of Realism – in search of everyday life to represent or social and environmental conditions to study.

SUMMARY

Cavour and the moderate hegemony
Zeffiro Ciuffoletti

From the Expedition of the Thousand to the Italian Kingdom
Zeffiro Ciuffoletti

Garibaldinism and peasants
Zeffiro Ciuffoletti, Lorenzo Piccioli

Southern Brigandage
Franco Molfese

The Right wing government
Maurizio Punto

A Parallel War of 1866
Idomeneo Barbadoro

Macinato movements
Stefano Cammelli

Science, culture, ideology in a unitary state
Giovanni Landucci

Pius IX, the sunset of the temporary power of the church and its reorganization
Filippo Mazzonis

Parliamentary revolution of 1876 and the Left wing government
Luigi Mascilli Migliorini

Southern idea and Giustino Fortunato
Piero Di Siena