Politics of the Sword: Dueling, Honor, and Masculinity in Modern Italy (review)

Steven Hughes' book on honor and politics in the founding of the Italian state is perhaps the most thorough analysis of the role played by the duel in any modern European society. Whereas the duel, especially when viewed from the perspective of Anglo-American culture, was once believed to be a pathetic vestige of moribund continental aristocracy, recent research has revealed that wherever it flourished the duel was popular with modernizing elites who regarded themselves as exemplars of the political culture of the future. Nothing about the modern duel resembled its ancestor. Duels were carefully regulated according to a quasilegal code; in principle any man deemed a "gentleman" according to current criteria could participate; and duels were remarkably safe when compared with the collective bloodlettings of old regime affairs of honor. Only the weapons and the ideological trappings of chivalry and personal glory resembled the duels of yesteryear, and even these were standardized or reinvented to meet the requirements of modern society.

The Politics of the Sword tracks the fortunes of the Italian honor culture from the eighteenth century through the period of unification to the final efflorescence of the duel under Mussolini. Hughes notes that though Renaissance Italians had more or less invented the relationship between an orderly duel and an affair of honor between noblemen, it was the French who kept dueling traditions alive through the eighteenth century and who then invented their modern forms when the armies of Napoleon threw together European men from varied nations, religions, and classes. The experience of serving in these multinational armies re-ignited in Italian men an enthusiasm for settling differences with pistol or sword, and sharpened their collective identity as part of a political elite destined to unite their divided lands. By the time the nationalist passions of the Risorgimento were at full boil, Italian men were dueling at a rate of one a day, a figure that was maintained until after 1870 and which diminished only slowly thereafter. However, only "gentlemen" or those who aspired to this status were accorded the right to duel, though in practice this category was very elastic in unified Italy. It included Risorgimento military heroes of all classes, most professionals, politicians, and of course military officers and men of noble blood.

The modern Italian duel was more vigorous and long-lasting than that of any European country. Hughes demonstrates that the honor culture that nourished the duel served as a bridge between the political elites of Italy's geographically and politically diverse regions. He artfully explains that the duel served to legitimate a man's claim to participate in the civilian political order by making him the personal guarantor of the sincerity if not the precise truth of his words. Political parties were weak, there were no defamation laws nor was there any history of decorous parliamentary procedure, and the press was venal and traded in innuendo and scandal. In effect, there were no protections for a man navigating the public sphere, including family, wealth, or accomplishment. As Hughes writes, the personal was the political. A man who was publicly "given the lie", whose reputation or person was insulted, or whose womenfolk or family name tarnished, was obliged to send his seconds to his offender to begin negotiations for a duel. The duel was socially exclusionary in the extreme; only a thin sliver of Italian men "qualified". However, the duel was also rigorously egalitarian in requiring all "eligibles" to issue and answer legitimate challenges.

As Hughes demonstrates in countless, often tragic, sometimes amusing examples, men dueled as individuals but also as Italians seeking to redeem centuries of servility to absolutism or an "effeminate" acceptance of foreign rule. The purely nationalistic motive in these displays of civic courage was ironically fueled by the numerous military and imperial fiascos endured by Italian troops from the 1850s to the end of World War One. It is therefore not surprising that Italian military...