Date of Award

2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

History

First Advisor

Susanna Schrafstetter

Second Advisor

Angeline Chiu

Abstract

This thesis examines the ways in which the Repubblica Romana of 1849 promoted a national program advocating for Italian unification that recontextualized the distant and recent past for their political goals. The breadth of this program included the development of a nationalist rhetoric which took cues from national movements in Italy following the defeat of Napoleon, the creation of visual national symbols on currency and during public celebrations and festivals, and the expansion of social programs such as the excavation of the Roman Forum. Together, these avenues of nationalist expression demonstrate that by the mid-nineteenth century the idea of the nation had evolved into a public reality as ordinary people began to participate in nation-building. This story follows the actions and words of Giuseppe Mazzini, Aurelio Saffi, Mattia Montecchi, Carlo Armellini, and many of the other well-known names of this early phase of the Risorgimento. Even after the fall of the 1849 Republic, ideas about Italian nationalism that had been espoused by the revolutionary regime continued through the photography of Stefano Lecchi. A conceptual paradigm of aggregate appropriation has been developed as a new lens to observe how these nineteenth century republicans employed a national narrative to reconstitute the ancient, medieval, and modern past as their own. The revolutionaries did not always directly pilfer from specific points in the past, instead they adopted views of ancient Rome, for example, that had been promoted during the Early, High, and Late Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution. These intermediary periods were then themselves appropriated by these republicans. Oftentimes, the style in which these individuals conceived of their own national identity was constructed to establish cohesion between the deep past and their own period. This meant that the national narrative that these revolutionaries were attempting to create was not merely teleological and cohesive but also layered and repetitively reflexive. Even apparent historical paradoxes and inconsistencies were absorbed into the same platform as the political circumstances of the Republic changed and their reliance on various interpretations of certain points in the past shifted.

Language

en

Number of Pages

187 p.

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