3 - The national question in Italy

Summary

IN THE SHADOW OF FRANCE, 1796–1814

The Italian question did not exist as a political reality before 1796. The Italian Jacobins were the first to pose the creation of a united Italy as a concrete political project, and their concept of the nation was derived from the French Revolution. For the French revolutionaries, the nation was not a given; it had to be created. The historical heritage was irrelevant, even dangerous. Just this abstract quality of French nationalism favoured its transplantation into Italy, where the historical basis for a political concept of nationality was lacking. The adoption of this concept was also prepared by a shift in the meaning of the word patria and its derivatives. Originally used in a neutral sense to refer to a person's place of birth, or, at most, the state of which he was a subject, it became charged with a new political significance. The patria could only be an association of free citizens, and a patriot was someone who worked for the cause of freedom against despotism. Paradoxically, it was the universality of the new idea of patriotism which prepared the ground for a new idea of the nation, because it implied a refusal of the legitimacy of the existing absolutist states.