Risorgimento: The History of Italy from Napoleon to Nation State

by Lucy Riall

A provocative and readable examination of the Risorgimento and the Italian unification, incorporating the latest research.

Genres: History, Italy, Nonfiction

200 pages, Paperback

First published November 27, 2008

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

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent dissection of the process of Italian unification. Probably not for the lay reader since Lucy spends much time discussing historiography and its inefficiencies. Takes the approach that since economic and political unity was actually non-existent, despite the best efforts of Italian patriot and Marxist historians, one has to return to the old standard, pure and simple cultural/linguistic universality (kind of).

[Erlan Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good stuff, a little dense on the historiography, but still highly interesting.

[Wesley Edits · Rating 3 out of 5]

As I recently became a dual citizen a few years back, I've been hungry to learn as much as I can about the country I now carry a passport for. Besides learning the language, I am wrapping my head around the complicated history of modern Italy. Going into this topic, I knew nothing. It's so layered, and the scope of different interests coming together is mind boggling. I have many more books to read on this subject before I can get anywhere close to fully wrapping my head around how we got here.

But I think this was a good start. Lucy does a nice job of setting the basic timeline, then walking through the different perspectives on whether — or how — the unification of Italy was actually a good thing, or a failed experiment that modern Italy is still dealing with today.

Definitely worth the pickup if you're interested in a zoomed-out version of this period in Italian history and want a quick overview. I'm excited to read her book on Garibaldi, but am hoping there are other books with more meat on the bone about this era.

[Antoninus · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author provides a very good synthesis on what's been researched and said so far, then builds her own narrative upon it. It's a very good, scientific book, very in-depth - in fact, sometimes painfully so. I wouldn't recommend it to someone who isn't deep into the theory of history and history of Risorgimento as there is a lot of historiography discussed and the text is filled with specialised vocabulary and confusingly deep analysis. Myself I didn't enjoy the read to give it a 5 star rating, but the quality of the job done doesn't let me rate the book any lower.

[Pablo Costa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This really should have been called "Risorgimento: The Historiography of The History of Italy from Napoleon to Nation State".

[Supriyo Chaudhuri · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very succinct introduction to the history of Risorgimento with a focus on the cultural and linguistic ideas of nationalism and how it played a role in the Italian unification.