Britain, Ireland and the Italian Risorgimento ed. by Nick Carter (review)

In his introduction to the edited collection, Britain, Ireland and the Italian Risorgimento, Nick Carter rehearses a number of broad interpretative lines which, he suggests, should inform our thinking about interactions between British, Irish, and Italian observers in the face of emancipatory nationalist movements—mainly the Italian Risorgimento, though one chapter in this book considers Italian views of early twentieth-century Irish nationalism. He suggests that the breadth and depth of British support for the Risorgimento have often been overstated, and that this support was more strongly colored by religious attitudes—notably, by anti-Catholicism—than has usually been recognized. Historians have more commonly recognized that Irish responses were divided along religious lines: Protestants were much more sympathetic, while Irish Catholics typically followed Archbishop Paul Cullen's lead in seeing the Risorgimento as a threat to Papal authority. Finally, and more generally, he suggests that responses from representatives of all three nations were shaped by conceptions of their own nation's principles and concerns, both ideological and practical. If the influence of ideology is illustrated by the observations just reported, pragmatism is illustrated by Giuseppe Mazzini's disinclination to accept Irish claims to nationhood, in light of the difficulties he might have faced in maintaining his British support base had he taken a different stance. If readers come to the book assuming that Victorians were for or against emergent nations as such, this should provide a corrective.

More than one contributor thanks Carter for his helpful criticisms and suggestions, so it seems that he has discharged his task attentively and constructively. And indeed the chapters are all well written and structured, making for a very clear and readable book. Nonetheless, the themes that the editor identifies as central are not very prominent in the contributions. A strong feature of the contributions is that they all set out to add information, and the knowledge on which the authors draw is diverse; contributors include both historians and literary specialists, at varying stages in their careers, some specializing in the study of one of the three nations in question, others in their interaction. Still, their orientation toward filling gaps entails some narrowness of focus, and corresponding interpretive limitations. Chapters 2 to 4—by Joan Allen on Mazzini's English-radical networks; by Elena Bacchin on Felice Orsini's lectures on the Italian cause and their reception; and by Raffaella Antinucci on the now largely forgotten Giovanni [John] Ruffini, Italian author of English novels—along with chapter 7, by Marcella Pellegrino Sutcliffe, on representations of Italian women in the Englishwoman's Review, painstakingly and informatively detail efforts to promote the Italian cause in Britain, and the networks which developed around them. Yet one is left largely to infer that, as Carter initially told us, these networks were neither broad nor deep. The two chapters concerned with Irish responses, chapter 1 (by Michael Huggins, reinstating the claim that Young Irelanders admired Mazzini) and chapter 5 (by Anne O'Connor on how the ex-monk Alessandro Gavazzi's fiery lectures stoked Irish sectarianism), certainly align with the editor's argument for the importance of religion in coloring responses in Ireland, but do so by providing illustrative case studies, not by testing and probing the interpretation. No contributor has much to say about what, according to the editor, is the under-acknowledged role of anti-Catholicism in shaping English attitudes, leaving that theme underexplored—though if the fiery Gavazzi was well received in England, this might be said to be implied. O. J. Wright's chapter, on British official responses to the newly unified Italian state, is clear and informative, documenting ministerial disappointment with Italians' failure more quickly to establish their ministries' accountability to parliament (though that was achieved by 1869), or to advance civilization (by, for example, improving roads and prisons, or ensuring the liberal and impartial administration of justice). This certainly suggests something about what these ministers thought that Britain, by...