The Italian Risorgimento: State, Society and National Unification

by Lucy Riall

The Risorgimento was a turbulent and decisive period in the history of Italy. Lucy Riall's engaging account is the first book of its kind on the upheavals of the years between 1815 and 1860, when a series of crises destabilised the states of Restoration Italy and led to the creation of a troubled nation state in 1860. Comprehensive, yet original, this textbook:
* Examines the social history of nineteenth century Italy and the social context of political action
* Offers a critical overview of the historiography of the topic
* Takes account of the most recent literature, especially literature in Italian not normally accessible to students
* Adopts a broad thematic approach
* Places the Italian experience in a European context

Genres: History, Italy, Nonfiction

120 pages, Paperback

First published May 26, 1994

About the author

Formerly Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London, Lucy Riall is a professor in the Department of History and Civilisation at the European University Institute in Florence.

Reviews

[Shane Avery]

More than adequate if you need to know the historiography of the subject. Dry and a bit dense, and lots of time given to the revisionists, which means some yawning and head scratching; the revisionists are good at problematizing, but rarely reach any conclusions, other than "as you can see, we can't draw any conclusions..." Not sure how much departure/revision is needed from Gramsci's conceptual framework anyway...

[Benjamin]

Comprehensive, accessible and concise. A perfect starting place for a dabbler in this period, providing one already has a rough grounding in the European landscape of the period.

[Jessica DMJ]

To be honest, I was disappointed in this book. It is basically an 80ish page literature review/historiography of the Risorgimento. As a result, it is quite dry...Riall spends most of the book reviewing scholarly sources on different perspectives of the Risorgimento: government, society, and economic development. However, there wasn't much there in terms of original arguments, which is what I think made it disappointing. And something about the arguments there felt watery. The last two chapters (5 &6) were the most interesting because Riall takes her own stance on things; I especially appreciated her analysis of Mazzini, because most people discount him as an Romantic idealist when he did so much more. But I recognize I have a soft spot for Mazzini. Other parts of this chapter were stronger, and made me want to give it 3 stars instead of 2.

[emily dunsby]

saved my history coursework actually, had the time of my life reading this

[Davide Di Legge]

Un libricino che offre diversi spunti interessanti sulle interpretazioni storiografiche del Risorgimento.

[Supriyo Chaudhuri]

This is a great short introduction to Risorgimento and Italian Unification, which the author clearly distinguishes between. There is a wealth of historiographical information, particularly detailed surveys of the 'revisionist' histories of nineteenth century Italy and what came after. I read this as an introduction to my more general studies in Modern Italian History, and it served that purpose exceptionally well.