Overview

'Everything must change so that everything can remain the same.' Those famous words from di Lampedusa's The Leopard are sometimes used to evoke the paradox of modern Italy: a young, patchwork country forged from ancient regions with their own dialects and distinctive identities. The notion of what exactly 'Italy' is may still be elusive. But the improbable and stirring story of Giuseppe Garibaldi and his I Mille, or thousand red-shirted volunteers; their bold crossing of the Straits of Messina in 1860; and their heroic march northward through the mainland, remains central to the myth of the making of the nation. The Risorgimento ('Resurgence', or 'Rebirth') united Garibaldi and others in the knowledge that fragmentation meant foreign domination. In his vigorous new history, Nick Carter shows that the final expulsion from the Italian peninsula of larger powers like Austria and France was never certain. Relations between the chief architects - Garibaldi, Camillo Benso (Cavour) and Giuseppe Mazzini - were often mistrustful, even hostile. Carter brings the chief individuals, ideas and battles to life while never losing sight of wider topics like religion, the spread of literacy and the enduring legacy of those remarkable years.

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9781780766126

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Nick Carter is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Wales, Newport. He is the author of Modern Italy in Historical Perspective (2010).

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