Risorgimento ("Renaşterea" anilor 1815–-1860) este una dintre cele mai contestate şi controversate perioade din istoria Italiei. Statul italian modern îşi dobândea atunci "părinţii fondatori" (Cavour, Mazzini, Garibaldi) şi ideile politice esenţiale (liberalism, naţionalism, republicanism).
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.