Austrian Encyclopedia Entries on Italy

From the Austrian Ministry of Culture's Culture Information System:
From http://www.aeiou.at/aeiou.encyclop.i/i967741.htm


"In 1797 Austria obtained important Italian-speaking territories with Venetia and Dalmatia, and after the Congress of Vienna the highly developed Lombard-Venetian kingdom. In the course of rising nationalism irreconcilable differences arose, and Austria became the main enemy for the Risorgimento (Italian unification movement in the 19th century). The wars of the 19th century (1848/49, 1859, 1866) caused Austria to lose its territories on the Apennine Peninsula, but parts of Tirol (Trentino), Istria and Dalmatia, that were inhabited by Italians remained within the union of the Austria-Hungarian Monarchy until 1918. Another matter of conflict was Austro-Hungary's function as protective power of the Vatican, although from 1882 on the Triple Alliance established a political pact and many Italians found jobs in Austria (railway and road construction).


Lombardo-venezianisches Königreich

------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------

Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom:
 By the Vienna Congress Act of June 9, 1815 the territory in northern Italy, which was reconquered by Austria in 1813/14, was organised as the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom governed by a viceroy. It comprised 47,500 km2 and in 1857 had a population of 5,173,000. The western part was the former Duchy of Milan, which came into the possession of Karl VI in 1714 as former Spanish estate and remained Austrian territory until 1797, and Mantua, which was handed over to the Habsburgs in 1708 after the extinction of the Gonzaga-Nevers line and which was united with the Duchy of Milan in 1745. The eastern part consisted of the former republic of Venice, which was incorporated into the Austrian monarchy in 1797, but was given to the Italian king in 1805. The official language was Italian, the laws of the Italian Kingdom of Napoleonic times continued to be effective. However, the Austrian administration had to struggle with social and political structures, which were different from those of the rest of the monarchy, and with the national movement (Risorgimento). On February 25, 1848 martial law was imposed; on March 17, 1848 a popular revolt broke out in Milan and Venice, in which the Kingdom of Sardinia interfered. In the summer of 1848 the Austrian troops under Radetzky were able to capture Milan, gain another victory at Novara in 1849 and capture Venice by August of 1848. The state of siege continued until 1854. In 1851 the kingdom was divided into 2 crownlands; after Austria had been defeated, it had to cede Lombardy to the Kingdom of Sardinia in the Peace of Villafranca at Verona in 1859, and Venetia to the Italian Kingdom in 1866.

I think we are meant to post something about our preferences for the group project - so I just wanted to put in my vote for doing a project that explains or presents to others in some way the differing ideas of national identity. Trying to show what does it mean to be southern, what does it mean to be Italian? Maybe this could be done in a presentation setting or in a debate setting, although my preference is for setting up a display somewhere. We could even use our little display/exhibit to prove that even these can be 'constructed' just as narratives are, just as national identity can be. And hopefully this can incorporate food in some way to satisfy the desires that I think a lot of us had to do so.

Edited by author 10-02-2006 09:48 AM
I'm with Anna on this one too...Personally, however, I'm not a huge fan of staging a debate, just because I had to debate in my last history class and just didn't gain a lot from it. But if people want to do it, I'll do the outside research for sure. I like the idea of asking the library to use the display cases, and maybe present our work in the tri-fold boards, an approach that tons of museums still use. If we decide upon anything that we deem CLP-worthy, I can work on getting it approved--I'm on the CLP staff, so hopefully that could work in our favor...?

I am partial to a display as well, but could imagine a CLP event that encapsulates both the display and either a live debate (or other living history performance) or a multi-media presentation. I am particularly interested in working on a display that would show the different symbols (e.g., flags, songs, etc.) used to demonstrate nationalism in our two cases.

After pondering for some time, I think I came up with a way we can incorporate several different ideas into one project. We could have a CLP event (assuming it would be approved for CLP status) in which we serve a dinner comprised of several different courses mixing both traditionally Southern and Italian foods. While the audience is consuming their meal, we could present the various ways in which nationalist ideas of the Confederacy and of the Risorgimento were manifested, displaying symbols, works of art, playing music clips, reading excerpts from works of literature and poetry, etc. We could incorporate the exhibit idea into this, using some of the items we collect in our presentation, then later setting up a display case for the public to view in the library or something.

McCardell’s The Idea of a Southern Nation provides a detailed and comprehensive account of the evolution of Southern aggravation and unrest to the powerful desire to become a separate nation. The book offers a step-by-step explanation of how American Southerners developed their own sense of nationalism that was completely separate and opposed to the Northern states in the same nation. McCardell argues that grievances over tariffs and political bullying were, alone, not enough to inspire a strong spark of rebellion amongst the Southern people. They needed to emphasize an aspect of life in the South that set them apart from the states in the northern region of the union. Both “Nullifiers,” and Southern politicians in favor of secession chose to make slavery the dividing issue between North and South. Throughout his book, McCardell demonstrates the ways in which the Secessionists propagated the institution of slavery as an asset and freedom that the North was sure to confiscate and thus initiate the Union’s slide down the slippery slope toward tyranny.
    Although the issue of slavery did not begin as the central grievance that justified the South’s attempt at secession, McCardell provides an outline of how it became the foundation for southern nationalism. He makes the point that, “slavery was the only issue that could unite the South, and yet it was the weakest position—morally and politically—possible (64).” In portraying the Secessionists as propagandists who utilized literature, science, and politics, religion and education to convince the population of the evils of the non-slaveholding North, McCardell points out that Secessionists had to convince the entirety of the white Southern population that the institution of slavery directly benefited them. Also, they had to stress the point that once the right to slavery had been taken away, other rights would soon disappear.
    The Secessionists faced the task of convincing both themselves and the Southern populace that the South could succeed and prosper without the North. Southerners had to look past the North’s prospering economy, strong political influence, commercial dominance, and literary achievements, and instead look to protect their advantage: slavery. In portraying the North as power-hungry bullies who had turned their back on the ideas that make up the United States Constitution, Secessionists did not seek to establish a sense of nationalism that separated them from the Union, but rather one that separated the tyrannical Northerners from the Union. Southerners utilized pseudoscience, commerce, religion, politics, and literature to convince the population that the right to hold slaves would be just the first of many freedoms that the North would strip from the South.
    McCardell concludes his book with a point that I think is reflected in Doyle’s book, Nations Divided. Doyle saw the attempted Southern Secession as a point in America’s history that served as proof of the strength of the nation. He argues that the fact that the United States remained united after this conflict, has served and can serve as a source of inspiration for other nations struggling with their own nationalist identity. McCardell draws his detailed chronology of the evolution of Southern Nationalism to a close with the statement that, “Southerners had forced Americans to think about their nature and purpose as a nation and hastened the emergence of a modern, integrated, and more genuinely United States (338).” Although his book emphasizes the propaganda that surrounded the sense of Southern Nationalism fabricated by Secessionists, McCardell does not view the South’s attempt at nationhood as a weak point in our nation’s history, but rather a solidification of the rights and ideals specified in the Constitution.

If Paola Gemme is vague regarding the historical significance of her sources in Domesticating Foreign Struggles, then John McCardell is extensive with evidence that his sources are pertinent to a discussion of Southern nationalism in 19th century America. In his book The Idea of a Southern Nation, McCardell provides lengthy accounts to show the interconnectedness of developing components of American nationalism. After reading Gemme’s critique of American perceptions of Italian unification, one must question the impact of her sources on American and Italian citizens living in the 1800s. Yet after reading McCardell’s work, where he goes to great lengths to prove the historical significance and impact of his evidence on the daily thought of Americans, it is hard to question if his conclusions are logical. Indeed one cannot doubt the historical significance of McCardell’s sources as he explains how the actions of influential people, periodicals, religious denominations, and political movements interact to develop concepts of Southern sectionalism and Southern nationalism during the Antebellum era, and ultimately American nationalism following the Civil War.
 McCardell concludes that the actions of the South leading to its secession from the Union in 1861 “had forced Americans to think about their…purpose as a nation” and furthermore that secession itself worked to “[hasten] the emergence of a modern, integrated, and more genuinely United States.” (1) Arguing that Southern secession was a critical component in developing a modernized American national identity, McCardell asserts that in the first half of the 19th century, the United States “lack[ed] cultural components” that had “traditionally defined” nations in the past. (2) Don H. Doyle used some of the same institutions described by McCardell in Doyle’s discussion of developing nationalism in America and in Italy in Nations Divided, including religion and education. McCardell goes deeper into the American South to look at these institutions and other factors such as the interaction of print media, changing political tides, the development of a proslavery argument from a patriarchal defense to a racist one, and economic tensions involving tariff controversies, agriculturists, and industrialists. While it seems logical that the evolution of Southern nationalism was a product of these interactions, and furthermore that the Southern nationalism that evolved forced the evolution of the critical cultural components necessary for an American national identity, it is incomplete to assume that the American South bore most of the weight of developing an American nationality. Is McCardell implying that a civil war was necessary for a “genuinely United States,” (3) and furthermore, is he asserting that the Southern contributions outweighed Northern ones in defining a modern American nation? Undoubtedly the North had an equal contribution to America’s national identity, even if one considers only their reactions to the contributions of Southern sectionalism and Southern nationalism.
 In his book McCardell provides detailed biographical sketches that could provide for interesting comparisons between individuals when looking at the Italian Risorgimento. For instance, Robert Barnwell Rhett is described by McCardell as a self-educated, “aggressive, impulsive young man” who one of the earliest proponents of immediate secession and who “spoke out unequivocally in favor of a Southern nation.” (4) This is strikingly similar to the description of Giuseppe Mazzini in the 1878 edition of Encyclopedia Brittanica where the fiery nationalist is described as being “willing to use conspiracy, if not assassination, in order to achieve his ends.” (5) Perhaps James H. Hammond, who “found a purpose” in the Nullification struggle and favored a moderate position of “resistance within the Union,” (6) could be compared to Camillo Cavour, who was “the statesman” of Italian independence with a good sense of tact and an ability to unite people around pragmatic ideas of Italian unification. (7) Though these comparisons could be drawn between many individuals in McCardell’s book, and they are certainly tainted by the bias of sources towards leaders such as Mazzini and Cavour, comparison of individual contributions across nationalistic movements has potential to provide greater understanding of civil strife and national unity, and ultimately a greater understanding of the influence of popular leaders on nationalism.

  1 -John McCardell, The Idea of a Southern Nation: Southern Nationalists and Southern Nationalism, 1830-1860. (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 1979), 338.
  2 -Ibid., 20.
  3 -Ibid., 338.
  4 -Ibid., 61-63.
  5 -J.A.S., Italy, Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1878, 487.
  6 -McCardell, 60-63.
  7 -Encyclopedia Brittanica, 487.

 I think it would also be neat to do a living history or debate, although I would prefer not to be an acting character in either of those. I am definitely willing to do research for the living history, help with costumes and scripts and organization, but I would rather not be one of the actors. As far as the display goes, I would like to be involved with creating panels comparing American national identity with Italian national identity, and hopefully displaying in some way conclusions about nationalism that we come to throughout the term. And I would love to cook as I hope food works its way into our plans!

Nice, Victoria! I like.

At my request, tomorrow's seminar will begin with a short presentation by Dr. O'Neill, who is the department's specialist in public history and exhibit design. This should last no longer than thirty minutes.

 In The Idea of a Southern Nation, John McCardell presents a thought provoking and comprehensive analysis of Southern Nationalists and Southern Nationalism in the years prior to the Civil War. Frequently citing William Freehling’s Prelude to Civil War, McCardell opines that the Nullification Crisis served as the impetus for Southern feelings of incompatibility with the rest of the union, which eventually led to Civil War. [1] In the 30 years prior to the civil war, Southern Nationalism was distinguished from American Nationalism as the intellectuals and politicians of the South realized their inexorable ties to the peculiar institution. Intellectuals Thomas Dew and Josiah Nott developed theories justifying the perpetuation of slavery as the famous authors William Gilmore Simms and John Pendleton Kennedy romanticized the institution and the uniquely Southern way of life. Southern separatism was further legitimized by the economic theories of J.B.D. Debow and the agricultural theories of Edmund Ruffin. In the Deep South, the eventual drive to secession was lead by demagogues William Lowndes Yancey in Alabama and Robert Barnwell Rhett in South Carolina.
 McCardell’s treatment of Southern Nationalism is both interesting and problematic because it is based on the correspondence, speeches and writings of a few elite Southern Nationalists who he asserts shaped the sentiments of the Southern population. The writings of Simms, Debow, and Ruffin were widely published, but literacy in the South was low in the 19th Century. Yancey and Rhett were, by all accounts, highly persuasive stump speakers but their speeches were rarely heard outside of the Deep South. Although McCardell’s account of Southern Nationalism is thorough and well researched, it begs the question of how much actual influence the elite Southern Nationalists had on the populace, especially those living outside of the deep south, and what role did the nationalists play in the actual process of secession and the executing of the war?
 Although many of the South’s great orators, scientists, intellectuals and politicians subscribed to separatist ideologies in the thirty years leading up to secession, it is nearly impossible to gauge what effect the doctrine of Southern nationalism had during the events of 1861 through 1865. In the introduction of the book, McCardell concedes that the majority of Southerners favored a peaceful solution and “hoped their rights could be maintained within the existing union.” [2] McCardell, however never differentiates between Southerners in the deep, middle, and border south and does not deal with the various social classes present in the antebellum South. Furthermore, few of the figures McCardell mentions in the book were influential outside of the Deep South states of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. After South Carolina seceded, Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana soon followed, but with only bare majorities of their respective electorates supporting secession. Virginia and Arkansas both held conventions that rejected secession in the spring of 1861. While in North Carolina and Tennessee secession proposals were rejected in popular referendums. It was not until after the bombardment of Ft. Sumter and Lincoln’s call for 75,000 Yankee volunteers who would have to march through their lands that the middle South joined the cause. [3]
 Another problem with placing too much credence on the role played by antebellum Southern Nationalists is their virtual disappearance at the commencement of armed hostilities. J.G. Randall assessed the role of Southern Nationalists during the war by saying, “their place in the drama was in the first act, in the starting of the trouble,” and McCardell reveals at the end of his book that Rhett, Ruffin, Hammond and Sims were not included in the Confederate government. [4] McCardell provides us with a clear and comprehensive picture of Southern Nationalist thought that affected politics, religion and economics during the mid 19th century. Southern Nationalists, however, must be viewed in light of the fact that they contributed little to the government and the war they helped create.



1. John McCardell, The Idea of a Southern Nation: Southern Nationalists and Southern Nationalism, 1830-1860. (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 1979), 48-49

2. Ibid., 9

3. William W. Freehling, The South vs. The South: How anti Confederate Southerners shaped the course of the Civil War. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 40-42

4. J. G. Randall, The Mississippi Valley Historical Review. June 1940, “The Blundering Generation” p.13; McCardell, Idea of a Southern Nation. 337

Museum Websites

Museo Nazionale del Risorgimento Italiano -- Torino
(National Museum of the Italian Risorgimento)
http://www.regione.piemonte.it/cultura/risorgimento/iindex.htm
(In English or Italian)

Mazzini Institute and Mazzini Home -- Genoa
http://web.tiscali.it/mazzinihouse/museo_del_risorgimento.htm
(In Italian)

Instituto per la Storia del Risorgimento Italiano -- Rome
http://www.risorgimento.it/risorgimento/default.htm
(In Italian)

Museo del Risorgimento -- Milan
http://www.museodelrisorgimento.mi.it/
(In Italian)

Museo del Risorgimento -- Palermo, Sicily
Description on the city's website: http://www.comune.palermo.it/musei/risorgimento/index.html
(In Italian)

As much as I appreciate the various apologies made by Anderson in his Preface to the Second Edition, this book certainly proves the difficulty in trying to define and explain something so abstract as the emergence of nationalism. Anderson recognizes that difficulty numerous times, and tries to aid the reader by offering the suggestion to look at and classify the term as an ideology, not a political stance. (1) A nation is "an imagined political community"...distinguished "by the style in which they are imagined". (2) Comments such as these and many others are examples of the helpful suggestion and statement made by Anderson in understanding nationalism, but upon completion of the book, in general, I felt that even though Anderson recognizes the complexity of his task at hand, I felt that this collection of ideas and chapters was somewhat discombobulated, lacking in direction, and sometimes unclearly worded.
I'm not sure if Anderson's most intriguing and poignant question, "What makes the shrunken imaginings of recent history generate such colossal sacrifices?" is even answered. Maybe this is a topic for discussion.
But there are other topics and discussions in the book that I still found to be interesting. I guess I will begin our discussion with a note on the first chapter, where I felt that Anderson made an interesting point (furthering his view of nationalism as a communal ideology) that nationalism is better understood by viewing it as a cultural system, and by referring it to other cultural systems like religion rather than political ideas. These systems preceded nationalism and shaped nationalism.
Anderson shows us that at some point, the importance of religious culture decreased, and other factors that were comforts to those persons in a community decreased along with it, such as the loss of presence of a unifying text-language, the monarchy, and comfort with the ideas of time. Anderson believes that the members of these communities would become desperate for other means of fraternity, and thus made themselves available to new ideologies, forms of community, or ways of looking at and forming their world and would then shape their nationalisms.


1. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. London: Verso, 1991, p. 5.
2. Ibid, p.6.

I was thinking about what I would like to do for our group project, and I think that I would most like to research the influence that music had over both Italy and the American South during this time. I think that we would be able to incorpoate music fairly easily into a display, and it would definitely add interest.

For our exhibit, I would love to work with the culinary worlds of the southeastern United States and Italy. Is the culinary world/food/cuisine/the idea of sharing a meal important in shaping national identity? Was it then, is it now? What is identified as most uniquely southern and italian? How often is food the answer to what might be the region's strongest distiguishing characteristic? If it is the answer, what does that mean? These are all questions that I would love to look into, as well as what foods specifically apply to each, what their history is, why they were important then or are now. This is just a little glimpse I hope at what I might find and be able to incorporate into the group project/exhibit.

Ernest Gellner’s Nations and Nationalism provides a highly theoretical examination of Old World/ European nationalism. In Gellner’s view, the emergence of nationalism as a phenomenon was inexorably linked to the emergence of industrial society. As industrialism emerged, it was followed by a monolithic, often government affiliated education system, which fostered literacy among the masses and facilitated the dissemination of literature used to perpetuate nationalistic ideology. Nationalism is thus, the imposition of a high unitary culture on the general population, under the guise of a pure folk culture, using the symbolism of the pristine and vigorous peasantry. After the illusionary culture had been established using the education system, literature, and folk art; the government sought to form an entropy of the population by enlisting the education system to produce loyal and worthy followers of the contrived nationalism.
 Although Gellner’s treatment of nationalism was quite interesting, its European view does little to help us understand the path to Confederate nationhood. The most interesting parallel that I could find in his work was his brief assessment of the effects of nationalism on the Islamic world. (1) I do not claim to be an Islamic scholar but, prima facie, there are many commonalities between the cleavages in the Muslim World and in antebellum American. Gellner asserts that the Muslim world, though of common ancestry, was split between and high and a low culture. The two cultures often went by the same name, were never fully distinguished, and both shared a passionate identification with a paramount event in the past that they now portrayed in different manners. The lower group valued the land and traditional folk and social groupings while the high group, “set for the more fastidious, scholarly, individualist and literate urban schoolmen.” (2) If I had not been reading so carefully, I might have mistaken Gellner’s classifications of Islamic society for a characterization of antebellum America. Even in the midst of secession both the Rebels and the Unionists claimed to be continuing the spirit of 1776 and fortifying the Constitution. And the country was clearly split between the agrarian South and the Industrialist North. The Confederacy, akin to many of Gellner’s examples, pursued nationalistic goals as its traditional society was exposed to the onset of industrialism.

1. p. 76-82
2. p. 80