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c h a p t e r 9 Against All Fundamentalisms: The New Mediterranean From Unification to a Place in the Sun: The Third Rome and the Imperialist Mediterranean Italy becomes a unified State very late, in the second half of the nineteenth century (1859–60), and the problem of national unity monopolizes its political and cultural attention for a long time. Italy arrives to unity after an extremely long period of divisions, without an autonomous presence on the international scene, and very late with respect to the most powerful European countries, which, with the exception of Germany, have already spanned the previous centuries with the great ships of their national states, thus becoming colonial and imperial powers. This ‘‘delay’’ forces the attention of nineteenth-century Italian intellectuals—even the greatest ones, such as Leopardi, Foscolo, Manzoni, and Verdi1 —to be focused, for the most part, on the theme of Italy’s ‘‘deliverance’’ from foreign control. Even the part of the century that follows national unity is dominated, at least in its early years—when the Historic Right (1861–76) is in power2 —by the construction and organization of the National State and by the complex problems caused by the unification of the Kingdom: primarily , the emergence of sharp inequalities in the levels of development and standard of living in different areas of the country, and the discovery of the existence of a Southern Question.3 During this first adjustment 125 126 Other Essays on the Mediterranean period, the restrained and prudent style of the Right prevails: It shows itself capable of managing very harsh repressions in the Mezzogiorno,4 and, in international affairs, reluctant to aggravate conflicts and situations that would force Italy to clash with stronger nations. It is only a question of time before the Mediterranean becomes an unavoidable issue for the new State, a knot that sooner or later must be unraveled. As Federico Chabod, one of the most famous scholars of Italian foreign policy, noted, it is the very expansion of the Kingdom of Piedmont southward that forces the ruling classes to adopt a new frame of reference that can no longer be just European or Northern European. Despite the reticence and aversion demonstrated by members of the old Piedmontese ruling class (Balbo, Durando, D’Azeglio), who fear the ‘‘Southernization’’ of the State, the annexation in rapid succession, first of the South and then of Rome, forces them to look differently at the Mediterranean. What prevails, even if slowly, with the rise to power of the Left (1876), is Mazzini ’s option,5 the one that attempts to reinterpret, in the age of Nations, the universal mission of Rome. In a very significant document, Mazzini himself outlines Italy’s ‘‘Mediterranean’’ calling and the crucial role that Rome plays in it: ‘‘Stop and extend your gaze southward, toward the Mediterranean . From within the vastness will arise to your gaze, like a lighthouse , an isolated point, a sign of distant grandeur. Bend your knees and pray! That’s where the heart of Italy beats! There lies, solemn and eternal, rome.’’6 Mazzini’s words already help us understand how the Mediterranean will become part of Italy’s political and cultural deliberations in the last quarter of the nineteenth century: It is the field of expansion of the Third Rome. After the Empire and the Catholic Church, Rome is called to a third great meeting with history, to a new phase of supremacy that the new State cannot elude without sliding into the cowardice of lazy coastal trade. Certainly, for some, at least initially, this new Rome will become the universal capital ‘‘of free thought and knowledge’’; but soon thereafter the easiest temptation will be the colonial adventure. The Mediterranean is thus destined to become, once more, mare nostrum in the narrower sense of the word: the practice and trial grounds for the expansionist aims of the New Italy. Promoting this turn of events will also be the crossover pressure of two problems the new State must confront: on the one hand, the social question (the rise of socialist movements, but also the worsening of the Mezzogiorno problem as a result of policies that damaged it in favor of Northern industry); on the other, the international question, which reveals that for Italy to overcome its marginality in the European context, it must change its role within the Mediterranean basin. Indeed, the new State has [3.145.77.114] Project MUSE (2024-04-25...

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