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Good evening. Welcome to the London School of Economics and thank you very much for coming to this public lecture that marks the bicentenary of the birth of Giuseppe Garibaldi, the national hero of Italy. My name is Matthias Cheniga Chibugi and I'm a lecturer in global politics here at lse. This lecture is sponsored by the association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism, or Asian, which is based here at LSE and aims to promote a deeper understanding of nationalism and ethnic identity. To get a sense of the range of activities promoted by asen, please have a look at the website of ASEN where you find information about public lectures and conferences, seminars, journals and other publications. Or also have a look. Stop by at the table outside of the entrance to this lecture hall where you will find some information and you can ask ASCENT volunteers about the activities. I would also like to thank the Italian Society of the LSE Student Union for their help in organizing this event. And I hope that many of you will join us for a Garibaldi birthday party that will take place at 8:30 in the underground Bar, which is organized by the Italian Society. The Underground Bar is just here on the right as you leave this building. It is a very great pleasure to introduce tonight's speakers, Lucy Ryle and John Bouilli. Lucy Ryle is Professor of Modern European History at Birdbeck College, University of London. She held positions in Cambridge and Essex, and she has also been a visiting professor at the Normale Superior in Paris, the Free University of Berlin in the United States. And I also would like to mention her links to the lse. She has both an undergraduate degree in government and history from the LSE and also a Master's in political sociology. Professor Rael specializes in the social and cultural history and political history of modern Italy, and she's one of the foremost authorities on the history of the process of Italian national unification. Her book Garibaldi the Invention of a Hero has been published this year. And let me tell you something. I mean, I think this is a truly extraordinary and fascinating book because it combines an amazing story, in my opinion, a very, very gripping story story with something also quite extraordinary. Every page of this book has some kind of interesting insight, scholarly and profound insight on things like the development of national identities, globalization, the technologies of communication, the political role of art and many other things. So I think this is a very, very successful and winning combination. The discussant of Professor L is John Bruyer. He's a professor of nationalism here at LSE and before coming to the LSE has taught in Manchester and Birmingham, and held visiting positions at the Universities of Hamburg, Bielefeld and the Wissenschaft colleague zu Berlin. Professor Brieu is the author of some very influential studies on nationalism and on the history of Germany in the 19th century. And I just would like to mention his seminal book, Nationalism and the State, at the end of the lectures. The speakers will be happy to take questions. Please note that this event is being recorded and I hope that a podcast of it can be made available online. Lucy, welcome back to the lse, I should say. And over to you.
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That's good, I think that's good. Okay, thank you very much for that introduction. Matthias. Can you all hear me? Yeah. It's a huge pleasure to be here. It feels slightly strange, I mean, not quite like going back to school when you haven't studied for your exams, but, you know, I've slightly got this strange feeling being down here and sort of up there. But anyway, I'll do my best. In Hawaii in 1880, the recently crowned king Kalacana Rex, he signed himself, wrote a personal letter to a man he did not know, but for whom he felt the greatest admiration. General, the king wrote, patriotism and gallantry command respect and admiration from every person and in every land. I, born and living in the Hawaiian Islands, which are situated at the antipodes of your beloved and classical Italy, have for your character, for your person, and for the eminent services you rendered to your fatherland, a respect and an admiration second to none. His correspondent was, of course, the Italian patriot and military hero, Giuseppe Garibaldi. Here's a photograph of him. I don't know how many of you are noticing that the hair has been touched up to make him look as though he has a bit more hair on the top of his head. And in fact, at this time in 1880, he was now really very old and ill and living in semi retirement on his island Caprera, off the coast of Sardinia. And the main point here is that Kalikana Rex, the King of Hawaii, was not alone in his feelings. Twenty years earlier, in 1861, shortly after Garibaldi's celebrated conquest of Sicily at the head of a thousand volunteers and the subsequent unification of Italy, a group of women had written to Garibaldi from Brandenburg, in Prussia, they too expressed their enthusiasm and admiration for him. The greatest of all modern heroes, they called him, and they asked him for a piece of his red shirt so that they could match the color, sew red shirts for themselves, and by wearing them, pay homage to him in public, as they put it in front of the whole world. Not just in an intimate sense, but also in our external appearance. In the same year, another enthusiast, a nobleman from Abo in Finland, wrote to express what he called his feelings of admiration, respect and love. The remoteness of his home and the ice and snow which surrounded his community had not, he insisted, isolated them from the events of the outside world or prevented their hearts in Finland from beating fiercely on behalf of freedom and the fatherland. Accordingly, and as proof of what he called his limitless admiration for Garibaldi, he asked Garibaldi to be his godfather, to be the godfather sorry for his newborn son, who would be baptized as a Protestant with the name Charles Gustav Garibaldi. Now there are countless hundreds, thousands of these letters from men, women and children in Garibaldi's private archives. And they express love, hope, sometimes they express hate, but mostly they express admiration and huge enthusiasm. And they can be analyzed in many different ways. For example, we could take the King of Hawaii's letter as an example of the classical lens through which events in 19th century Italy were often viewed by foreigners. He talks about classical Italy. The Prussian women's letters we could use as an indication of the fact that women particularly used their enthusiasm for Garibaldi to gain access to a public sphere which was otherwise closed off to them. And the Finnish nobleman's letter we could take as an expression of the actually really quite widespread, although to us rather strange, identification of Garibaldi with the Protestant religion. But taken together, all of these letters testify to the broad reach of Garibaldi's popularity and specifically to its capacity to create a new kind of public. Personally and passionately engaged with political events and able to transcend in its enthusiasm the boundaries of gender, the boundaries of education and perhaps all of locality, region and nation. The letters tell us effectively that by the time of the unification of Italy in 1860, Garibaldi had become a global hero and that he was also perhaps the first modern celebrity. Let me just talk a little bit for a moment about this kind of Garibaldi as a celebrity, because I think it works like modern celebrities. Garibaldi became an ever present and international figure on the kind of what we would call, or might call the mid 19th century media scene. He was an influence on fashion and on food, the subject of popular plays, novels and an object in souvenirs, a constant reference in newspapers and magazines. Thanks in particular to the invention of new illustration or new techniques of illustration, the lithograph, the daguerreotype and the photograph, he becomes a kind of constant visual presence as well. This first image of Garibaldi, an English one from about 1862, is interesting because obviously the scene itself is entirely imaginary, but the Garibaldi, the actual Gary Bardi, the figure is taken from a photograph. So you've got a photograph of Garibaldi which has been redrawn and put into an imaginary landscape. This is another example of a lithograph which has been taken from a portrait and reproduced in innumerable illustrations. And then finally, a photograph. What's interesting, of course, here is the stiffness of Garibaldi on the horse. He doesn't look like a great athletic figure, and the reason for that is had to stay still for quite a long time in order for the photograph to be taken, because of the technology of the time. The high point of Garibaldi's famous, some of you will know already, was his visit to London in 1864, where he met with an extraordinarily large popular reception. According to Lord Palmerston, no one ever had before a reception such as Garibaldi. And I'm just going to show you a couple of images of this because I don't want to talk about it in any great length. This is an illustration from the Illustrated London News showing Garibaldi's reception in Trafalgar Square as he passed through on his carriage. And then, on a kind of rather different level, a souvenir produced in Staffordshire of Garibaldi at home. This is a small Victorian china ornament which, reproduced industrially, which gives you again, the kind of idea of Garibaldi's object, of sort of souvenirs and et cetera. The point that I want to make here, his popularity, the popularity of Garibaldi, this kind of dominant presence of him in the media, was immense indeed, it was such that even the vociferously hostile Catholic magazine in Italy, La Civita Cattolica, recognized this popularity. It referred disparagingly, in fact, in an article attacking Garibaldi, to the custom of meeting Gary Bowdy wherever he went, with cheers, drums, trumpets, bells and frantic applause. The same magazine, La Civita Cattolica, complained about the ubiquitous presence of Garibaldi's face, his sulky face, as they put it, shown in shop windows and as they put it, on the walls of taverns and public lavatories. Moreover, much like other more recent celebrities, before or since, Garibaldi didn't really have much of a private life. What I mean by that is that his private life on the island of Caprera seems to have functioned as a kind of early, kind of, if you like, presidential Camp David, dedicated to receiving distinguished visitors and journalists, writing correspondence and physically recuperating from the exhaustions of his public campaigns. At least part of Garibaldi's lifestyle, Caprera, his work in the fields, his happy children, his farmyard, his life in the farmyard, was put on public display as proof of his heroic status. Both this picture and this picture and this final picture, which is Garibaldi spearing Fish, my personal favorite, A part of a series of seven illustrations which are published by the Illustrated London News in 1860, by an artist who went to and journalist who went to visit him. And this is a final one from almost exactly the same period, but an Italian album produced in 1862 showing Garibaldi in the heart of his. Of his political and private family. What this shows, this picture and the previous ones from the Illustrated London News, is that the public was obsessed not just with Garibaldi's poetry, politics, but also with his private life. And especially they were obsessed with its more sentimental aspects, like his lasting love for his dead white wife, Anita, and with the minute details of his daily life, like the kind of digging in the fields and the fishing. Indeed, so many of Garibaldi's fans turned up uninvited on the remote island of Caprera that it fueled a local boom in tourism. Some of these people who turned up or tried to turn up were polite. For example, a very sad letter that I read from a 50 year old lady's companion, a Ms. Burkhardt, she called herself, who wrote, pleading to be allowed to live her miserable occupation, what she described as a synonym for pain and suffering, a moral servitude, and to come and live with Garibaldi freely and independently as his nurse. Others were rather more alarming, like a Spanish boy who made it to Caprera and was allowed to stay for a while, but became so obsessed by Garibaldi that he shot himself when it was time to leave. And this is a picture. Obviously this was then reported in the press. And the press report about this incident confirmed that the boy had made an idol of Garibaldi and no longer being able to live with him, had had decided to die where he lived. Now, such passionate behavior may surprise, it may make us laugh, but there is actually a serious point here about the kind of relationship established between Garibaldi and his adoring public. Garibaldi inspired respect, admiration and wonder at his marvelous exploits, but people also felt and longed to be personally close to him. They had never met Garibaldi, but felt intimate with him. They loved him passionately as we've seen, they told him about their private lives and personal problems, and often they identified their lives, their political aspirations and their political ideals with his. As an American admirer wrote to him in 1866, asking to be his friend and apologizing for her temerity with equal ardor. I forget, she wrote. I forget in writing to you, that it is not an old and intimate friend I address. So long have you had a home in my heart. So what I want to really talk about today is how we might explain this intense relationship between Garibaldi and his public, more specifically in the political and cultural world, still dominated by a tiny, narrow elite and. And a male elite at that, access to which was restricted by education, privilege and wealth. How do we explain the global reach of a largely uneducated, hitherto unknown revolutionary outsider living on an isolated island in the remote in the middle of the Mediterranean? In order to answer these questions, what we need to do is to turn from the hero worship which is what I've been describing to you up to now, and look at the hero himself and also shift our attention away from his home in Caprera and look instead at the elitist but rapidly changing world of 19th century politics. So let me look first of all at the hero himself. As his closest colleagues realized at quite an early stage in his career, while Garibaldi was still an unheard of expert in the Rio de la Plata, in South America, Garibaldi possessed many compelling qualities which gave him an unprecedently broad international appeal. On the one hand, these qualities were quite traditional. Specifically, he was very energetically, recklessly courageous in battle at a time when such qualities were highly valued in society and military technology was such that reckless bravery could still change the outcome of a battle. But there was more than just that. This is, I think, a painting by a Uruguayan artist called Juan Manuel Blanes, but I'm not absolutely sure. On the other, as we can perhaps see from this, there was something also quite new about Garibaldi in mid 19th century Europe. He wasn't just good looking, which I hope gives you some idea here. He was also rather physical and we could say sexual in terms of his appeal. He had long hair and a beard. He had an attractive body. He also wore exotic, brightly colored, flamboyant clothes, which he borrowed from the inhabitants of South America and which he was to wear with occasional interruption for the rest of his life. In public, he seems to have naturally possessed or to have learned great dramatic timing. He knew, as we can see here, in a way and we see from some of his photographs he knew how to strike a pose, he knew how to use his voice, he knew how to make theatrical speeches, and he used his smile to make himself more charming still, in fact, everybody who met him remarked on Garibaldi's charming manner. And to my mind, it's a kind of masterpiece, really, his charm of political theory, theatre. Because what he's doing is he's being heroic and magnificent in the public arena, quiet, dignified and unassuming in private. And that's something which has a kind of double impact on people. He, in fact, in private was relaxed and friendly and took care to notice everybody. He was equally known, as I've just mentioned, for his modest lifestyle on Caprera and was apparently uninterested in the trappings of fear, fame. Now, this kind of modest lifestyle and attitude allowed him to be compared to other great Republican leaders, from Cincinnatus to Washington, men whose greatness was defined by that retirement to public life to, in fact, in all three cases, to their farm at the height of their fame. So he can also be described as a kind of typical republican hero. Finally, in Garibaldi's whole life, what he liked to call, like to refer to as his tempestuous existence, he also met with more than his fair share of tragedy and triumph. The episodes of his life were then constructed and told like a story, and indeed they bore a striking resemblance to the plot lines of popular romantic novels by authors like Walter Scott, Alexander Dumas or Massimo d'. Azeglio. It seems, in fact, that people related to Garibaldi's life story as a kind of mix of politics, reality, if you like, and sort of romance and escapism on the other, and I'll talk a little bit more about that later. For one American writer who saw Garibaldi in Rome in 1849, Garibaldi seemed to have stepped straight from the pages of a Walter Scott novel. And indeed, the French novelist Alexandre Dumas was so inspired by Garibaldi's exploits that he sought him out at home, took away Garibaldi's memoirs and rewrote them as a historical romance. In short, Garibaldi appeared to possess in real life all the attributes of a 19th century romantic fictional hero, as well as many of the political virtues prized in the increasingly popular and radical political arena. So, just to sum up what I've been saying so far, bravery, modesty, sexuality, theatricality, and the political life which was told like an adventure story, these are the core elements of Garibaldi's appeal. However, by saying all of this I do not mean to suggest that Gary Vardy was a fake or that his role in the popular cult which grew up around him was purely or solely theatrical. What I am saying, however, is that Garibaldi was a careful creator of his own image. And he combined some very solid military achievements and indeed some political achievements with an attention to the more spectacular aspects of politics. And I think that makes him an extremely interesting political figure. At the same time, none of these elements which I've been describing to you can explain, it seems to me, by themselves, the international fame and reach of Garibaldi. That is, they don't really explain by themselves how a hitherto unknown outsider excluded from political power reached the proud new father in his ice fields in Finland or the unhappy Ladies and Gentlemen companion. Nor do they explain why he touched all these people so intimately or why they in turn felt such a familiarity with him. And it's in this respect, and as I explained in more detail, I think in my book, that Garibaldi's renown or his fame should also be understood as something manufactured, created or invented. That what I mean to say here is that it seems to me really indisputable the fame of Garibaldi was the result of a careful political strategy planned and executed on an international scale, made public and compelling in the pages and pictures of the nascent mass media and both reflecting and contributing to the rise of popular politics. Let me look first at the political strategy. The political strategy, it seems to me, was the creation really of one man and a man that Garibaldi called his friend, teacher and counselor, even though he fell out with him frequently. The great nationalist Republican leader Giuseppe Mazzini. Now, if we agree with scholars like Eric Hobsbawm and Benedict Anderson and see nationalism as in some ways at least, a recent recruit in human history and modern nations as a conscious invention of new elites, then I think we should also recognize that it helps in the process of this invention to have some existing symbols and traditions which can give this newcomer at least the appearance of longevity. The problem initially was that there was no such thing. Despite Mazzini's strenuous assertion and conviction that Italy was a nation given by God and established by nature. Most of the obvious markers of belonging to a national community, that is a unified secular monarchy, a common spoken language, a continuous history of national unity, all of these were really lacking in Italy. And indeed, the one truly Italian symbol, the papacy in Rome, was the representative of a transnational Catholic conservative identity which cut across entirely Mazzini's idea of the nation. Now, it seems to me that Mazzini's genius, if you want to call it genius, was to have entirely understood the problem of credibility which undermined his idea of Italy and to have evolved an effective answer to it. What he needed to do and what he sought out to do was to find a new symbol. Find a symbol, sorry, of his new Italy. To make this symbol credible and promote it internationally, and in that way, get international support for Italian nationalism to counter the transnational symbols of Italian conservatism. And it seems to me this symbol was Garibaldi. Mazzini. Just to continue for a little bit with Mazzini, I think he's extremely important in this story. Mazzini lived as a political exile, as probably most of you, you know, in London for almost his entire career, from 1837 until his death in 1872. And from his position in London, he created an extended radical network of revolutionaries and their sympathizers. And this network is only now really being painstakingly reconstructed by historians. But what we do know is that it included most of the foreign exiles in London and involved both men and women in a series of political activities which included conspiracies, press campaigns and charitable works. Through these exiles, Mazzini's network stretched eastwards and southwards, right across Europe to Poland and Russia in the north, to Greece and the Ottoman Empire in the south, and to port cities like New York, Rio de Janeiro and Montevideo in the Americas. He created an international organization, what Maurizio Isabella, who's here this evening, has called a liberal international. And Garibaldi was part of this vast network. It was through this network that Mazzini found and contacted Garibaldi. And in turn, it was through the same international network of activists that Mazzini first spread Garibaldi's fame as a political symbol. Now, the mechanism which Mazzini used to promote Garibaldi and which he instructed all his collaborators in Europe and the Americas to use, was the press. And so, just before I get back to Garibaldi again, I'm going to talk a little bit about the press, because I think it's crucial to understanding the kind of nature of Garibaldi's popularity and if you like, his global reach. For Mazzini, the new popular press just emerging in Europe, and indeed especially in England, where he was based, was at this time what he called the only power in modern times. And he likened its power in shaping public opinion to the role of steam in the birth of modern industry. In other words, totally Fundamental before many of his contemporaries. In fact, Mazzini seems to have understood the new possibilities for political communication inherent in the rapid increase during the mid 19th century, both in mass literacy and the equally rapid expansion in print culture. The rapid production in books, newspapers, illustrated magazines, cheap printed portraits, an ever greater number and an ever lower cost. In particular, from his observation of British radical popular politics, Mazzini came to appreciate the prominent role played by radical activists in England in pioneering through the popular press a new style of publicizing politics. Now, this style is quite important. It borrowed from popular culture and prevailing Romantic conventions, notably the adventure story, which I've already talked about in relation to Giri Radi, and it challenged traditional notions of deference, authority, and good taste. In fact, radical activists and writers seized on the possibilities offered by cheap mass publishing to create a strong sense of community and collective identity, what we might call an imagined community among readers and their subjects. Thus, the increased accessibility of the printed word and image, together with the Romantic exaltation of emotions and belonging and identity, helped to shape a new popular engagement with poetry, politics, and a new popular engagement with political leaders, in which feelings of esteem and reverence mingled with those of familiarity, intimacy, and love. I might mention sometimes contempt as well, because not all the leaders were loved. So Garibaldi, to come back to him, who had made a small name for himself in Uruguay fighting against the Argentine dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas, was in fact intentionally taken up, fashioned and sponsored by Mazzini as part of a media strategy to make the Italian nation visible and convincing. In Mazzini's hands, Garibaldi became a tangible symbol of Italianness, italianita, and notably, with his courage, good looks and selfless modesty, became a kind of living proof, a living embodiment of the national resurgence, or risorgimento, which Mazzini promoted so tirelessly in his writings. So while Garibaldi was still in Uruguay, he had already acquired a distinct public profile across Europe as an Italian military hero, the epitome of all that was brave, generous and attractive in the Italian national character. By the outbreak of revolutions in Europe and across Europe in 1848, thanks to the international press campaign orchestrated by Mazzini and his followers and sympathizers, Garibaldi's fame actually also began to move beyond and outside radical political circles. For example, in about 1847, Garibaldi had a walk on part as the heroic Barry Galdi in a rather bad but quite successful Dutch war novel called Dolores had been mentioned with approval by both Italian journalists and Italian political leaders, who had very little sympathy with Mazzini, and he had sat for a portrait in Montevideo, which was then lithographed, sent to Mazzini in London, and from there circulated to the illustrated press for publication. Now, as a result of this kind of happy coincidence, because it is a very happy coincidence, between Mazzini's propaganda efforts, the political upheavals in Europe, and Garibaldi's sudden return to Europe to fight for the revolution, this portrait commissioned by Mazzini enjoyed an extended. Let me show you. It was first published in Italy's illustrated magazine, Il Mondo Illustrato. After Garibaldi's spectacular victory over the French army In Rome in 1849, it was copied and republished in the Illustrated London News. It then appeared in another British or English illustrated magazine, the Lady. And here we have a copy of it. You see that the hats changed, but basically the clothes are the same. And also the Paris Illustration magazine, l' Illustration, elements of the same portrait were reproduced in satirical cartoons. So here's exactly the same outfit. This is Garibaldi thumbing his nose at the Austrian soldiers who are trying to capture him. And then again, you notice the same hat in this satirical Piedmontese magazine. It also continued to condition pictorial representations of Garibaldi, even as the man himself changed his image during the 1850s. And I was going to give you two examples here of French illustrations of Garibaldi from 1859, where you've got a kind of meld going on between a man in a general's uniform and a kind of. And the more older South American figure, this is an illustration by actually Gustav Dore. And you can see he's wearing something which looks a bit like a military uniform, but he's still got the long kind of cape over the top. And then this one, which is my personal favorite, which is, you know, have you ever seen a general in a military uniform look anything like that? But he's still got some of the kind of old look with the hair. Okay, I'll leave that up for you to look at. In 1860, during the battle for Palermo, the London Times reflected on the integral role which the international press had come to play in modern warfare. Battles, it wrote. Battles are now fought in an amphitheater. With the eager public of a hundred nations, in a figurative sense, looking on. The duel between Garibaldi and the Neapolitan viceroy is being fought out under eyes of newspaper correspondent, tourists, artists and English or American sympathizers, as well as more official spectators. The star of this international press show was Garibaldi, and he used the publicity to promote himself and the nationalist cause. In fact, in 1859 period this picture of this illustration was drawn even before the war with Austria had started. He took supposing to for photographs and portraits in his new uniform as a general in the Piedmontese army. Thereafter, Garibaldi was pursued by French, German, American and British journalists and their enthusiasm was only increased by the fact that he disappeared for a while into the Alps and they couldn't find him. However, when they did find him, he took enormous care to cultivate the press. In fact, in all his campaigns he ate dinner with journalists, took time out from fighting to talk to them, and was generally extremely polite and pleasant with them. For example, during the fighting for Palermo in 1860, in the midst of the bombardment of Palermo, the American journalist Henry Adams caught up with Garibaldi and expressed his amazement that Garibaldi thanked him for coming, as if Adams wrote, I had done him a favor. And he commented, that's the way he draws people. Frank Vizitelli, the British artist, journalist for the Illustrated London News, and actually an extraordinary character in his own right, also met Garibaldi in 1860 during a particularly intense battle and told his readers, I shall never forget as long as I live the courteous reception given me by the general. He advanced to meet me from his group of officers and shaking me by the hand, welcomed me to his roof, which at any time might be splintered into fragments above our heads. In 1860, again hiding from enemy troops in the mountains above Palermo, Garibaldi made contact with a group of foreign journalists and immediately invited them to accompany him on the invasion of Palermo, which was planned for the same evening. In fact, when he reached Naples at the end of his campaign in September 1860, by this stage he was followed and accompanied by a large international and I think probably what we can really call embedded group of writers and artists, all of whom were kind of passionately involved with him. These included, just to give you the most famous names, the celebrated French novelist Alexandre Dumas, who in fact wrote to Garibaldi at this time that his mission was to kind of get use his own literary talent to add publicity to Garibaldi, the Hungarian correspondent for the Times, Colonel Ebert, the Anglo Italian writer for the Daily News, Charles Arrivabene, and for the French, American and English illustrated papers, the French artist Ulrich de Fondvier, the French photographer Gustave Le Gray, the German American Thomas Nast, and of course Frank Risitelli, who I already talked about. According to one account. In fact, the atmosphere in military headquarters. In Garibaldi's military headquarters was the kind of babel of foreign journalists and volunteers, whose only common language was German. And, as he wrote, a caravanserai of the Orient with all his guests of different rangers, races, fashions, colors, can only give some idea of our headquarters and of the respectable or vulgar, pleasant or grotesque, renowned or unknown people who sat at our table during those fantastic months talking about 1860. So the nature of Garibaldi's fame is radical and international. And the final element that I want to talk to you about now is, is that it is at least also partly fantastic, or, if you like, imaginary. Another press report on Garibaldi in 1859, professing, I don't know whether it really was, but at least professing to be the adari of an Australian on a walking holiday in the Alps who just happened to meet Garibaldi in his campaigns. And this Australian expressed extraordinary surprise at Garibaldi's appearance. He wrote as follows from his portraits and warlike exploits. I had pictured to myself a very tall, large man of sallow complexion, with long black hair and beard, with something of the romantic air of those Spanish guerrilla chiefs who sung their songs to the guitar or killed people with equal gusto. So the Australian writer went on, he could scarcely believe that this unaffected, gentlemanly man, who seemed almost English in his manners and who entered and sat down quietly with them, was Garibaldi. And in fact, this is much more of the man that he actually met. This is a photograph of Garibaldi taken in 1851 in the United States. And it's quite a radical change of image from the other pictures that I've been showing you. It was also in these years, these years, 1859-1861, that the first popular biographies of Garibaldi appeared. In fact, between 1859 and 1861, biographies were published in Italian, French, German, Hungarian, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese and of course, English on both sides of the Atlantic. There's just a really extraordinary number of these biographies, but what's interesting about them is not just the shape, sheer number, but is the fact that they're often at least quite significant. Part of them basically works of fiction featuring, just to give you a couple of the most sort of obvious inventions, Garibaldi's birth at sea in a storm and a series of dramatic escapes across mountain rivers with and without his wife, Anita, and a series of melodramatic adventures with imaginary lovers, including a Montenegrin heiress called Margarita and a tragic opera singer called Lucia. Anita herself, his first wife, sometimes appears with different names. She's sometimes called Florita and she's sometimes called Leonita. And in a German biography by a man called Ludwig von Alvansleben, she is actually the daughter of an Argentine officer who rushes off with Gary Baldi. So the relationship here is also dangerous and illicit. And I think the final picture that I want to show you is actually a picture from Ludwig von Alfonsleben's biography of Gary Bowdy, showing Garibaldi really here as a kind of Prussian general, it seems to me, to give you the idea of the kind of extent of fantasy which goes around. So the Australian walkers, the hiker in the Alps. His reaction to Garibaldi, I think, should not be attributed to a mere journalistic hyperbole. What I think it does is that it reflects the emergence of a kind of fictional Garibaldi and a more general trend to recast politics as a form of entertainment and for leaders to refashion themselves as romantic heroes in a political melodrama of their own creation. So I'm just going to conclude now, if I can have a few more minutes here. So to answer the question that I posed earlier, because I like to answer a question that, if you pose it in a lecture, how do we explain the global reach of Gary Bowden? How do we explain the intense emotional relationship established between him and his public? Part of the answer, I think, can be found in the immense charm and physical allure, if you like, of the man himself, together with his undeniable military achievements. In this respect, I think we can say that heroes happen and they cannot be simply made at the same time, Garibaldi's broad appeal as a global hero was helped by his seemingly inherent hybrid qualities, derived perhaps from his own international life experiences. In a sense, it seemed to me, he was neither fully European nor completely American. He was distinctly Italian, but also not entirely Italian. He was a gaucho and he was a gentleman. He was feminine in his gentleness and masculine in his actions. And what this means is that a wide range of people from different classes, education and culture, men and women, could find something in him or about him, to identify with him. And this helps to mobilize international public opinion. And this had a crucial impact on the events of Italian unification. So real achievements, if you like. At the same time, it seems to me that all of these qualities that I've been talking about were refashioned, fantasized about, and exaggerated in innumerable articles, books and illustrations across the international press. Political charisma is often presented as something Natural, if not magical. And this blinds us, it seems to me, to its workings. And in fact, of course has the effect of increasing the intensity of our emotional response to it. I would argue that certainly political charisma is something manufactured, although of course some individuals are much better at it than others. And in particular we can seek to study, analyze and understand the production of political charisma over time. So Garibaldi, it seems to me, was also made. He was also a creation. His global reach and intense emotional appeal reflect changes in the public sphere. And in particular it was a sign of the arrival, if you like, of a non polite society with a different set of cultural rules and new emotional responses, and which, thanks to the rapid emergence of the popular press, had actually become much more difficult to control. In this new political world, stories and storytelling became an integral part of political entertainment. So successful political leaders had to become popular heroes with adventurous, tragic and or triumphant life stories. There is of course, nothing new about hero worship and there are precedents for Garibaldi's fame in the cult of saints, in the rituals of medieval monarchy and the spectacular politics of the French Revolution. Still, it seems to me that it's very important to note what is new about Garibaldi, since it has much to tell us about the emergence of mass politics in the modern world. Garibaldi was a radical outsider with an international revolutionary appeal. In fact, despite his essential modernity. Perhaps what's most interesting about Garibaldi is the gulf which separates his experience as a public figure from the political displays of today. Garibaldi reminds us of a period before the nation state when nationalism was cosmopolitan, not chauvinistic and exclusive, and when European liberalism and European radicalism rested on transnational networks. He also tells us that political leaders were once considered sexy and politics was once perceived as something romantic. He represents an alternative democratic tradition of political heroism so often overlooked by historians much more interested in the authoritarian cult of the 20th century. Most important of all, it seems to me, Garibaldi is less a sign of the constraining power of the press, a less a sign of the constraining potential of the. Of political symbols and political heroes, of their kind of authoritarian potential. He seems to me to be much more an indication of the power of the press and the power of political symbols to subvert, to destabilize and indeed to challenge the existing political order. Thank you very much.
- [46:14]
C
It's quite an act to follow and I don't really intend to try to follow it. It is the main act. It's a wonderful book. I don't see my job as critiquing it in any way here. I want to add some other things that I think put it into a broader context. Context. The story of Garibaldi. It reminds me, actually, when I was listening to Lucy when reading the book, when she adds this more and more contextualization that makes you understand how Gary Boddy was possible. An episode from television series Last of the Summer Wine, when the three heroes are in a fish and chip shop and you hear a voice drift out from Compo, the scruffy one who says, how is it they always manage to find batter that fits that fish so exactly? And sometimes when I look at a figure like Garibaldi, I think, how does the batter fit him so exactly? My opening note is Lucy will probably have touched upon the following the move of nationalism from, in Italy, at least from elite discourse and politics, including that of conspiracy and insurrectionism, which was Mazzini's early career, to a direct popular politics linked to voluntary militias and the use of violence. The timing of the emergence of this kind of politics varies in different countries and does not happen in those where states maintain strong control. The key moment throughout Europe generally is 1848, 49. But in Italy, for special reasons, this moment extends in certain ways to the 1860s, particularly to Sicily in 1860. It also precedes the rise of routinized mass electoral politics, either in parliaments or in stable mass organizations, such as the British radical movement like Chartism, in the middle, middle third of the century. My point is that these kinds of situations are situations in which I, Garibaldi, could not exist. So we have to ask why the very specific situation in which he could exist? The key elements enabling this, I think, apart from the temporary collapse of state Authority, as in 1848, 49 or in Sicily in 1816, are a form of imagining, a set of political values, a form of effective action for change, and a person who can embody these as a charismatic personality. Imagination. The form of imagination is, as Lucy, in part of her book, which she didn't say very much about, deals in detail the formation of what might be called a romantic national discourse. The values, it seems to me, are above all a model derived from. From French revolutionary Jacobinism. The action is above all militia action. The circumstances of his time in South America, which kind of trained Garibaldi, prepared him without him knowing. And then in 1848, 49 and then in 1860, but with diminishing returns. His later military actions in 1867 and 1870 are a good deal less glorious. Then we have the person about whom Lucy has said so much. And then finally, as she shows in her talk and in her book, how these fuse with modern media technology, fast printing, lithographs, early photography, the telegraph, steam transport, mass readership. Again, many of these things only coming about in the very time that Garibaldi was alive and led to the possibility of inventing a particular type of hero, a democratic, a charismatic leader. I also realised how much I had bought into this Gary Baldy cult myself. When I was discussing this occasion with Matthias, we were wondering why we were uneasy with the subtitle of the book, Invention of a He. And I remember James McDonald saying, I know why I'm unhappy with that. He was a hero. If there ever was a hero, it was Garibaldi. Lucy makes it clear that he both was a hero and he was produced and received. And she also shows, I think, very interestingly, how he deliberately himself played a quite conscious part in that process. But my contribution, as I see it, is to talk about what I would call particularly as this was organized by somebody from global politics, the transnational, internationalist and global context of the Garibaldi cult and Garibaldian nationalism. Garibaldi was only possible given the Telegraph esteem, the mass media a vigorous, popular, radical politics. And I want to stress the politics because, again, as Lucy makes clear, this is a political process. This isn't just a matter of cultural production, this isn't just a matter of romantic invention. This is a matter of desperately serious political conflict. We need to, I think, look at the politics a little bit. First of all, as Lucy's made clear, the role of the political exile. A lot of this politics doesn't take place on the country that is the target of the political action. The centres are London to some extent Paris, to a lesser extent Brussels to some extent New York. The people involved see themselves as radicals, democrats, nationalists, but also internationalists. Mazzini founds an organization, Young Europe as much as Young Italy. This is based on an idea of nationalism as a radical cause opposed to existing power and privilege. Whether it takes the form of dynasty, aristocracy, hierarchical Catholic and state churches. It's a shared transnational vision, but of a Europe of nations. Although this vision is very different from the actual Europe of nation states, which was to take shape in the late 19th and early 20th century, we find the same groups linking across national boundaries, focused on the places where exiles could gather, London above all, pursuing together a range of causes. For example, the same people in London who play such an important part in Organizing that massive reception for Garibaldi in 1864. And it didn't just happen spontaneously. It required a lot of organizing, a lot of trade associations, a lot of radical clubs and the like to do it. As well as the government being involved. These radicals were also in the 1860s active in supporting the northern side in the American Civil War, where they made a cult of Abraham Lincoln, of supporting the Polish insurrection in 1860. Seen as another great democratic nationalist cause, to some extent of supporting the German cause, insofar as it was seen as a democratic cause. Each of the groups in these transnational exile centers had their own particular concerns and they tended to project those concerns onto their allies so that Gary Boldwy would be differently understood by different kinds of kinds of radicals, different kinds of figures, according to their own particular take. Gary Boldy clearly had a different meaning for an English Whig when he came in 1864, or for a London trade union activist or for a French radical. But nevertheless, these radicals formed networks capable of mobilizing popular opinion, organizing demonstrations, forming transnational organizations. As I say, they were crucial to the huge turnout for Garibaldi in 1864. Some of the same people go on to form the International Working Man's association, the First International with which Karl Marx, who didn't buy into the Garibaldi cult, was involved in that points across the conflicts within these circles and they are perpetually conflicting. Political exiles are perhaps the most quiet, quarrelsome of all creatures. And it points to particularly emergent conflict between different kinds of democrats, socialist democrats and non socialist democrats. It's important, I think, to understand how this transnational world which fuses nationalism and internationalism, was possible. It is a world where the nation state is still a contested or as yet unmade form. Although in some places Britain, France, usa, but also as models Switzerland and Belgium. There were some kinds of nation states that gave people models of how to proceed, visions, concrete ideas about what their own nation state would be like. But this has to be set against the zones of Central Europe ruled either by large multi ethnic dynasties, perhaps Berg Romanovation, Ottoman empires or fragmented into small territorial states, the German and Italian lands, or some combination of that. This is very, very specific to the middle third of the 19th century. Nothing like it existed before and after 1870, nothing like it existed again by the later 19th century. The creation of the nation state as the more normal unit. Italy itself, of course, Germany, some parts of the Balkans, even to some extent the Habsburg Empire with Austro Hungarian dualism changed the nature of nationalism. Now, nationalism tended to be contained within the nation state. And it generated in turn new kinds of nationalism, nationalism opposed to democratic radicalism, governmental nationalism, if you like, real nationalism, not nationalism as a dream. But nationalism is the politics of nation states. The effect, I think, was to cut the link, the complementarity between nationalism and internationalism. Nationalism is more contained within the nation state. Internationalism is more a question of national parties cooperating on an inter hyphen, national rather than a transnational basis. And insofar as internationalism continues to be a strong organized movement, it is increasingly organized by socialist parties. And it is presented as a form of anti nationalism, which is the story I think we normally associate with internationalism. We think of internationalism primarily as anti nationalism, rather than linked to very, very firm forms of nationalism. So again, I think Garibaldi's fusion of nationalism, nationalism, transnational, international, is only possible in this middle third of the 19th century. It's also, I think, linked to a very specific international relations context. Britain and France, as powerful states, but also with states with relatively open politics and powerful public opinions, were able and willing to a certain extent to promote nationalist causes in the weaker zones of Central Europe, especially the Ottoman and Habsburg empires, to a lesser extent the Romanov Empire. Those causes in turn needed to present themselves sympathetically to those states and their publics. And again, Garibaldi was part of selling that kind of Italian story above all to British governments and British public opinion. So the thing I just want to keep harping on about Gary Baldy's activity and image, militantly nationalist but with a transnational following and seen as an internationalist, is really only possible in this middle third of 19th century Europe. Lucy makes clear the importance of political conflict in the cultural production of Garibaldi. And this seems to me to be a general feature of how nationalism grew. Both internal conflict amongst nationalists, especially between moderate liberals and democrats, and with established powers. The enemies of nationalist nationalism may make a crucial contribution to national unification, but it was itself constantly divided. But in fact, I think that was part of its strength. With such conflict within nationalism, I think one can see three ways of trying to proceed to mobilise on a nationalist basis. And I think they're all exemplified in different aspects of the Caribbean cult that come out from Lucy's book. One, you can try and pretend that the differences don't exist, you can harmonize the different elements. I think there's a wonderful illustration that you didn't put up of Gabaldy going to Paradise. Well, as a fairly militant anti clerical, who possibly was an atheist, I don't know he wasn't an atheist, but certainly was anti clerical. I don't quite know what his view of paradise was, but did he expect to find Cawe and Victor Emmanuel in paradise with him? It's a strong example in 1859, when of course, the moderate liberals under Cavau and Piedmont are cooperating with other nationalists. He now has a Piedmontese general's uniform. He is shown with these other, other heroes of unification. It's also, of course, the post unification official cult. I love the story about how he wanted to be cremated and his body was virtually seized for a grand public funeral. In other words, in undermining what he very much himself stood for, they were trying to add to the harmonizing official cult. The second possibility is to polarize, to stress the difference. For example, I think this seemed to me to come out of what you said about the late Garibaldi, the disappointed Garibaldi. A Garibaldi who is living in an incomplete, corrupt Italy. A Garibaldi who hates the papacy but also the Italian government. And this makes us realize that Garibaldi actually stood for a very radical and minority politics. He wasn't part of the. Part of this harmonious pantheon. The third is to depoliticise the figure by making the cult one of personality itself. And Garibaldi certainly seems to me lent himself to this. He can be presented as a military but unpolitical figure, strong in the international sphere, where seeking support from a range of groups with different often opposed concerns. They didn't have to ask us what Gary Bully's politics were, because Gary Baldi wasn't really intelligent enough to have politics. And there was this caricature. I think of Garibaldi as a stupid man at one point. Is it true? I don't think it's apocryphal, but somebody said to Mazzini, isn't Garibaldi handsome? He has the head of a lion. Gahsini said, yes, and the brain. Gary Bald is military. Is that true? Anyway, it seems to me Gable, his military reputation, his courage, his martial feats, lent themselves to such a cult, which to some extent, I think he encouraged himself by largely abstaining from a great deal of open political activity, going into exile, not doing, I think, anything like the kind of public speaking you associate with party political figures as not being really associated with political parties. There are other heroes in this internationalist radical politics. For example, the Hungarian leader Kossuth, Abraham Lincoln. But it seems to me Garibaldi was unique in the duration, extent and intensity of his hero worship. What accounts for this, well, one thing I think simply luck. I find a miracle the man wasn't killed a lot earlier. The fact that he actually got into old age itself seems to be a kind of miracle. But I think, again, we can see it in terms of a particular moment between the opening up of popular and radical politics, really from the 1830s and 40s, but before this was channeled into parliaments and political parties. Gary Baldi's problems to some extent start once you get electoral politics in Italy. And there is a division within the left as to what extent they focus on parliamentary action or to what extent they focus on extra parliamentary action. The radical links between nationalism and internationalism are broken, I think, with the formation of a powerful socialist movement which expresses a different kind of internationalism that turns against the official forms of nationalism in their own states. And then finally there is the unique Italian situation. I cannot imagine a German Garibaldi. I cannot imagine Garibaldi going to Moltke in 1866 and offering his military services and being listened to for any time at all. States such as Prussia or Russia were much too powerful for the kind of action that Garibaldi stood for. The nearest equivalent was with the Greek independence struggle in the 18, which of course again encouraged a romantic cult associated with another romantic figure, Byron, and to some extent the Ottoman Balkans later. But really, with the exception of that earlier Greek movement, it did not engage international sympathy to the same extent. And we can see this by referring to the key moments. 1848, 49. This was a more general moment of state breakdown, when other hero figures do come to the surface in other revolutions. Robert Blum, with his martyr's death in Vienna, August Blanqui and the other Parisian Jacobins, Louis Koswith I already mentioned. But they were all more civilian politicians. Their way of operating is through conspiracy, insurrection or certain kinds of civilian politics. And Nisophar Costwich is a military leader. It is of a much more regular hunger Hungarian army than the kind of forces that Garibaldi led. What I think is unique with Garibaldi is that he can repeat the trick of 1848. 49 in 1860, specifically in Sicily, which is one of those kind of backward and slightly ramshackle areas where that kind of action once again can achieve its effects. He's far less successful when regular military units dominate, as in 1859, or when there isn't that general breakdown of order, as in the abortive invasion of the Papal States in 1867. There's this one extraordinary belated reentry into this world in France in 1870, following of course, the failure of regular army units in war against Prussia, and indicating also his transnational reputation. So again, I want to keep hammering this notion that the batter precisely fits this particular fish. Finally, there's something about the notion of failure. There's often this sense, I think, when one is talking about Garibaldi and democratic nationalism. Mazzini to talk about Italian unification, Italian nationalism as some kind of a failure. It's a much stronger trope in Italian historiography than it is, for example, in Germany historiography. Why is that? And at this point I'm going to say a few critical things about Garibaldi which might offend any subscribers to the Garibaldi cult. Garibaldi stood, I think, for an impossible politics. But his interventions in these unique situations in 1848, 49 and 1860 made him appear not merely admirable, but for a brief moment, that his politics might actually be realizable. They never were. Ultimately, I think all they could ever do was destroy or undermine in particular Bourbon power in the south and papal power in the centre of Italy. But they found it much more difficult to build. Garibaldi's great problem was building practical political movements, constructing organizations that would exercise power in the peaceful time that followed the violence. Their degree of destructive strength helps sustain the myth of possible success. Their inability to construct or to prevail over their conservative and moderate liberal opponents makes it then appear that this is tragically unnecessary. It's surrounded by enemies and cowards and people who just stood. Stop that final push. Rather than being what I think it was, an utterly predictable failure. The cult of Garibaldi is in part the cult of anti politics. Are there any lessons for a later period? That kind of radical nationalism, international linkage, tends to move beyond Europe to other places of weakening imperial control, but where as yet there is no clear nation state, sets of successors. One sees it, for example, in the pan nationalist movements espoused as Pan Asianism, Pan Africanism, Pan Arabism in the first half of the 20th century, but not usually associated with much in the way of guerrilla warfare. The nearest equivalent perhaps is in the links between radical socialists in different Latin American countries following the Cuban revolution. And if we had to think of a 20th century figure who might possibly be comparable to Garibaldi in both action and image, it would be Che Guevara. But there never again, I think, is that moment that existed in mid century Europe of transnational linkages between popular and working political associations, which broadly agreed on the complementarity of nationalism and internationalism and with a particular way in which those goals could be be pursued by violent means exercised by militias or revolutionaries, volunteers rather than by regular armies. Garibaldi occupied, I think, a unique position in that world and as Lucy stresses, not just because of impersonal factors that I've been talking about, but because of his own qualities, as in her final words of her book, a living breathing man. Lucy persuades me that Garibaldi was an invented hero, but only with a real highly improbable hero could such an invention ever succeed. Thank you.
- [69:20]
A
Thank you very much for two very fascinating lectures. Before I give to Professor Rahel de France opportunity to give us some comments, I would like to invite questions from the audience. Yeah, this gentleman over there, please, please say your name.
- [69:43]
C
Robin Hanna, an alumni of the nac. The three figures I associate with the Resortimento, pardon my cop is Garibaldi is Mazzini, and then the Prime Minister of Piedmont, Cavour, who seemed to have some relationship with Garibald. I'd be interested if the professor could say something about the relationship between Garibaldi and Cavour.
- [70:13]
A
Yes, Any more questions? Yes, over here please.
- [70:25]
D
Yes. Not a question, but just three very brief comments. First of all, bringing in the question of political exiles before the Italian exiles. Of course we have in London the Spanish exiles of the 1820s, who were a very turbulent bunch, but who are also patronized by Whig liberals and so on. The second thing I wanted to comment on is I'm very interested in the way that Garibaldi presents himself. There's a parallel to this in the Americas. It isn't Abraham Lincoln, it's Benito Juarez, who is another image creator. He builds his own cell image as the virtuous republican in complete contrast to the splendor of great generals and so on, full of color and uniforms. He paints himself as the dull lawyer in drab lawyers clothes, the dark frack, the black tie and so on. Yet he becomes the representative representative of a Latin American type of nationalism, specifically in Mexico. And it's interesting to compare this type of nationalism with that of Garibaldi in Italy, because here you have another dimension and that is ethnicity, race. Lucy asked the question at the end of her talk. How was it that Garibaldi had this whole on people? Now what he didn't have was a racial or an ethnic hold, as for instance Juarez did. Juarez was an Indian, a Sacrotec Indian, dark skinned. And he could appeal to the majority population which was not a white elite. And in that sense we take up this other point of popular nationalism. Because the third point proceeding that I want to make relates to this, and that is we tend to have forgotten a bit the Latin American movements for independence and ask whether these were nationalist movements or not. But perhaps they were, perhaps they weren't. That's an open question, and we don't intend to get onto that one now.
- [72:45]
C
But.
- [72:48]
D
Projected a bit for 40 or 50 years into the Juarishira, and you have the emergence of a popular liberalism which you certainly didn't have in the previous generation. And this popular liberalism is one which encapsulates the ethnicities involved and builds into nationalism. The race question, not just anti colonialism, anti European, but also a positive statement of mixed blood or Indian mixed blood ethnicity.
- [73:30]
B
The interference was bad. Thank you. Oh, the relationship between Garibaldi and Cavour is a long and complicated story, basically, but the. The really short answer to the question is that I think at the beginning both think they can manipulate the other. It's very clear from their letters that they think they can manipulate the other. But it's also fairly clear who comes out on top, and that is Cavour. I mean, I think, in fact, something that John was saying about how the Garibaldi moment, if you like, is very sort of specific to the mid, slightly late 19th century. And you're obviously right. It's undeniable that you're right. But I think there's another issue that I would tend to stress kind of more really, or what I would stress anyway, which is that of course Garibaldi and the radicals are defeated. And I think that one of the things that I tried to kind of point out is that there is actually this really, quite, quite important tradition, and they don't just kind of lie down and die. You know, faced with the kind of force of history and the kind of inextricable political and economic developments, they are actually defeated. And it seems to me that there are a number of occasions when they might not have been defeated. So the relationship between Garibaldi and Cavour is important, of course, because Cavour defeats Garibaldi. But what Garibaldi manages to do quite successfully is to kind of pull off a kind of counter public relations exercise by retreating to Caprera and essentially throwing this kind of shadow over Italian unification as a kind of sad, defeated hero and actually putting Cavour into a very bad light. So actually, one of the things that you've got going in Italy after unification, again to be rather simple, is a kind of very strong, it seems to me nationalist discourse, but one which is really divided between the moderate liberals and the radicals. And it's not, it seems to me, that clear, just to repeat, that the moderate liberals are necessarily going to win. It's not that clear to me they ever do entirely win or the radicals ever do entirely go away, actually, so that we can maybe talk about that some more. But what Brian Hamnet was saying about Juarez is actually really interesting. I think the point about race and ethnicity, I just. Yeah, thank you for that. But the point about the kind of virtuous Republican is an interesting one because I think in many ways Garibaldi does fit in with that model of the virtuous Republican, particularly with this kind of retreat to Caprera and his rather so of sad figure that he cuts there. And this kind of both the retirement from power and the kind of rejection of the corruption of politics which somebody like mentioned. I mean, as you know, they're more or less exactly the same age, I think. I mean, Voir is maybe like a year older than Garibaldi. Yeah, yeah. So in fact what he is is exactly the same age as Mazzini. And it seems to me that kind of do. A dark of virtuous republican finds its counterpart as much in Mazzini as it does in Gary Variety. So anyway, there are lots and lots of parallels, as you rightly say.
- [76:56]
A
I would like to ask a question. I mean, as John was remarking, there's something about the life of Garibaldi that is in a way the triumph of the improbable. So the very fact that he's survive for so long despite putting himself in danger in so many situations and part of his appeal was due to this, putting himself into danger is already quite surprising. So I would like perhaps to ask you a question that maybe historians might not be terribly keen on addressing, which is essentially, what does it tell us about. What does Garibaldi tell us about the macro historical developments like nationalism, national identity, national unification, if I mean the relationship between contingency and necessity in a way. And if Garibaldi had been killed immediately after landing in Sicily in 1860 at the Battle of Calatafimi, for instance.
- [77:59]
B
How.
- [77:59]
A
Would Italian history have developed from there? I'm asking you to do a little exercise. I mean, it's late in the evening, so probably we can informally try to imagine what an alternative historical path could have been for Italy.
- [78:15]
B
I mean, my immediate reaction, without thinking about it to any great extent, but my immediate reaction is by the time, I mean, it's perfect whether or not they won in Calatavini without Garibaldi, okay? Because the really crucial thing on one level is that they manage to land in Marsal and then they win at California. And that gives them this kind of huge head of steam and changes actually the attitude of the press to Gary Valdivas. In fact, one of the things I find very interesting is that before the victory in Calatavimi, all the press was saying, oh, my God, this is it, this is over. You know, he's going to die, it's going to be a disaster. They get going to get defeated. So it's not just Garibaldi, it's also the fact they win in Kalatovim, which is really miraculous. And it seems to me that if they'd won in Kalathamim, but Garibaldi then died as they offered his wounds or whatever, I'm not sure it would have made a huge difference in the sense of that. In one sense only, he would have immediately been turned into a martyr, which is what actually he thought he was going to do. There's a letter from him written as he leaves, basically saying, in fact, he left for Sicily at a moment of immense personal and political crisis. And so I think he goes in this kind of slightly. I mean, crazy would be too powerful a word, but slightly kind of really quite disturbed state of mind, saying, essentially, I'm going to Sicily to die for Italy. So he's quite convinced that that's his role and he would have become a martyr. And I think that although obviously his military skill is immense, both in the kind of battle of Miladz and in the battle of Volturno later on in. Later 1860. So they did need him as a leader. I think the thing that really makes a difference in 1860 is partly a strategy which is already in place without Garibaldi and partly the enthusiasm of everybody. So I'm not sure if he'd been killed, it would have necessarily made a huge difference. And I'm also. I mean, it's a really interesting question. The point is that Mazzini, at a particular moment in the 1850s when he's extremely pissed off with Garibaldi because Garibaldi has decided to kind of leave for exile for two years into the Pacific Ocean, and he essentially disappears for two years, which turns out to be a very, very good time, because that's the moment when everyone gets incredibly compromised by political failures and he's nowhere to be seen. But Mazzini is furious. And Mazzini actually kind of takes up a couple of other heroes and Tries them out for size. And so it's actually quite possible that someone might have come to take his place. You know, I mean, I think he's. What I said at the end of the lecture, I actually really mean. I mean, I think there are some people that are very, very good at sort of being political heroes, it seems to me. He's actually kind of spectacularly good example of it. But he's not unique. He's not the only person. I don't know whether you. What you think.
- [81:15]
C
My name is alex.
- [81:16]
A
Just one moment. Wait.
- [81:22]
C
Hello. My name is Alex Ross.
- [81:24]
B
Rob.
- [81:24]
C
I'm a former student here at the lse.
- [81:26]
B
I was intrigued by your discussion of.
- [81:28]
C
Masini's network, and I'm interested in what were the wider objectives of the non Italians in his network, and how did Garibaldi, in turn, assist them?
- [81:39]
B
I mean, I think in order to understand that, you have to understand, again, what I was saying before about kind of nationalism and internationalism, and essentially what they're. To put it rather crudely, what they're committed to is some kind of idea of international revolution. And so they. Mazzini, for example, didn't think that it would just be an Italian revolution. It had to be a European revolution. It had to be a revolution all over the world, and the institution of kind of republican nations all over the world. And so on one level, it just. It makes sense, therefore, that they're all helping each other. Anything exactly the way that John described, for example, in London, that this is a kind of major international production by people. When Garibaldi arrives, I think the other. And the other point, really, which links in with that is that, for example, Garibaldi in Uruguay, he obviously is not fighting for Italy in Uruguay. He's part of a kind of nucleus of Italian revolutionaries who've gone to live there in the 1830s and 1840s. And their idea is that, you know, this oppression in Buenos Aires, and it is our duty as kind of international republicans to uphold the flag of freedom in Uruguay, which is being threatened by the oppression of Buenos Aires. So it works. I mean, it works very much because of a kind of commitment to an international political ideal, but it also works as a kind of mutual support network and also as a kind of forum, which I think is, in a way, partly what Brian Hamnet was talking about earlier when he was Talking about the 1820s and the Spanish Revolution, also operates, I think, most importantly, as a kind of forum for the exchange also of ideas and so on. So it kind of works on whole series of different Levels, if that answers your question. Again, anybody wants to add anything.
- [83:39]
C
Just a couple of points, I think. The first thing is this network isn't made just by Mazzini. It's made by lots of different kinds of political exiles. 1848, 49 provides you with lots of different examples. There's exiles from France, there's exiles from every failed revolution, the continent, and they've all got their own particular ideas and they've all got their own particular concerns. The second thing is it'd be quite interesting to project Mazzini's Europe of Nations onto the actual Europe of Nations faith that emerged later, because he has a very, I think, simple view of what a nation's, and therefore what nationalism should succeed. There's just a few big nations. When the Habsburg Empire collapses, it surely must, it will only be really succeeded by four nations, Germans, Poles, Hungarians and Italians. One of the puzzles of 1848, 49 is it suddenly showed that there were some other people calling themselves things like Serbians, Romanians, Czechs or whatever. You didn't actually agree with that particular doctrine. So this is another case where I think it turns out to be the politics of very special kinds of nationalists, usually nationalists in what I would call what then called historic matters, as dominant cultural groups who tended to ignore ethnic difference beneath them, often found amongst groups who were found amongst the peasantry and so on. So it's a particular kind of network. They have certain kinds of common understanding. Those command standards are rapidly revealed in the later part of the 19th century to be rather shaken.
- [85:24]
A
If there are no more questions from the audience. I would like to thank you all for coming to this lecture of the association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism. And Lucy Ryle will be available to sign copies of her books in the underground bar during the party organized by the Italian Society. The Italian Society has a little table outside of the lecture room where copies can be bought. And finally, I would like to thank very much Lucy Ryle and Jean Bui for their lectures. They were most fascinating and fascinating on a fascinating subject. I also should say thank you very much.