by Lucy Riall
But how special was Garibaldi? To what extent was his charisma also the result of genuine political or personal achievement? In an age when fame is ubiquitous and we no longer believe in Great Men, this is an especially tricky question to answer. Nevertheless, throughout this book I have sought to stress Garibaldi's singular importance as a political actor. He remained in the public eye for nearly forty years, and his life spanned the shift from nationalism as a revolutionary movement to nationalism as the official ideology of an established regime. In particular, I have contended that Garibaldi's military ideas, and especially his vision of volunteering, were both politically innovative and broadly popular, and that his military successes played a key role in the construction of his political appeal. I have also suggested that the period of dictatorship in Sicily in 1860 was a more significant political experiment than is often assumed, and that his later political career contains much that is noteworthy. Primarily, I have argued that his outstanding talent for political communication should be taken seriously. If the reports and letters about Garibaldi are to be believed, he learnt (or he naturally possessed) great dramatic timing: he knew how to strike a pose, he knew how to use his voice, his body and his smile, he knew when to be brave and when to be humble, and he knew (perhaps too well for his colleagues) when to abandon the stage and distance himself from the public furore created by his presence. He applied what was by all accounts a powerful physical and sexual magnetism to the purpose of political persuasion, and he followed this up with an unparalleled display of modesty and openness. He seems instinctively to have understood that, in the extended imaginary communities created by mass print culture and entertainment, nothing succeeded so well as the personal, intimate touch.
Historians have long struggled to distinguish between fact and fiction in the making of Garibaldi, to find the man behind the mask, and to destroy or confirm Garibaldi's heroic reputation by revealing the truth about his military failures, his political mistakes and/or his private obsessions. In a sense, however, this is to miss completely the point about his life. With Garibaldi, image and reality were effectively indistinguishable. Both were part of a prolonged process of political display which took in South America and Caprera, his political battles and his private life, which became part of a public memory that defined an ‘epoch’ (the Risorgimento), and which seemingly only ended with his death (and even then, as we have seen, not entirely).
In conclusion, the myth of Garibaldi may not be true, but it was uncommonly effective. Garibaldi showed how Italians could be ‘made’, and his presence helped to create, encourage, and greatly increase support for political radicalism and nationalism. In turn, the popularity of Garibaldi offers us insights into the general role and function of myths in nationalist movements. It tells us that successful nationalist myths are neither genuine nor invented but a compelling blend of both; and that they are neither spontaneous nor imposed, but can far better be characterised as an intricate process of negotiation between actor and audience where the author (or source of authority) is difficult to discover. Most of all, it suggests that, in the complex and contingent processes which go into making a national community and in the political struggle to control and use this sense of belonging, there are few symbols more potent and more plastic than a living, breathing man.
NOTES
Author's Note
All emphases in the text are in the original unless otherwise stated.
List of Abbreviations
ACS Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome
ASM Archivio di Stato, Milan
ASP Archivio di Stato, Palermo
ACP Archivio Comunale, Palermo
BL British Library, London
Epistolario Epistolario di Giuseppe Garibaldi, 11 vols, Rome, 1973–2002
MCRR Museo Centrale del Risorgimento, Rome
MRG Museo del Risorgimento, Genoa
MRM Museo del Risorgimento, Milan
NA The National Archives (Public Record Office), London
SSSP Società Siciliana per la Storia Patria, Palermo
Scritti Scritti editi ed inediti di Giuseppe Mazzini, Imola, 1906–86
Scritti e discorsi Edizione nazionale degli scritti di Giuseppe Garibaldi, vols 4–6. Scritti e discorsi politici e militari, 3 vols, Bologna, 1934–7
Introduction
1. J. Butler, In memoriam Harriet Meuricoffre, London, 1901, p. 50; also in D. Mack Smith (ed.), Garibaldi. Great lives observed, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1969, p. 130.
2. Minuta di proclama agli Italiani, Genoa, 5 May 1860 (or Talamone, 8 May 1860), in Garibaldi, Scritti e discorsi, 1, pp. 239–41.
3. There is a huge number of popular and academic biographies of Garibaldi. Among the most up to date are, in English, D. Mack Smith, Garibaldi. A great life in brief, London, 1957 and J. Ridley, Garibaldi, London, 1974; and in Italian, G. Monsagrati, ‘Garibaldi Giuseppe’, Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 52, Rome, 1999, and A. Scirocco, Garibaldi. Battaglie, amori, ideali di un cittadino del mondo, Bari and Rome, 2001.
4. M. Amari, Carteggio di Michele Amari, ed. A. d'Ancona, 3 vols, Turin, 1896, 2, p. 134.
5. G. C. Abba, The diary of one of Garibaldi's Thousand, trans. E. R. Vincent, London, 1962, p. 77.
6. Quoted in D. Beales, ‘Garibaldi in England. The politics of Italian enthusiasm’, in J. A. Davis and P. Ginsborg (eds), Society and politics in the age of the Risorgimento. Essays in honour of Denis Mack Smith, Cambridge, 1991, pp. 188, 190.
7. C. Duggan, Francesco Crispi. From nation to nationalism, Oxford, 2002, pp. 426–50; idem, ‘Francesco Crispi, “political education” and the problem of Italian national consciousness, 1860–1886’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 2/2, 1997, pp. 141–66.
8. On the burial, see B. Tobia, ‘Una forma di pedagogia nazionale tra cultura e politica: i luoghi della memoria e della rimembranza’, in Il mito del Risorgimento nell'Italia unita, Milan, 1995, pp. 194–207; U. Levra, Fare gli italiani. Memoria e celebrazione del Risorgimento, Turin, 1992, pp. 110–13. On the 1884 pilgrimage, see B. Tobia, Una patria per gli italiani. Spazi, itinerari, monumenti nell'Italia unita, Rome and Bari, 1991, pp. 100–42.
9. I. Porciani, La festa della nazione, Bologna, 1997.
10. Tobia, Una patria per gli italiani, pp. 143–8.
11. M. Baioni, La ‘religione della patria’. Musei e istituti del culto risorgimentale (1884–1918), Treviso, 1994.
12. The most thorough study of the Vittoriano is C. Brice, Le Vittoriano. Monumentalité publique et politique à Rome, Rome, 1998. On the official political iconography of nineteenth-century Italy, see S. von Falkenhausen, Italienische monumental Malerei im Risorgimento, 1830–1890, Berlin, 1993.
13. See E. Gentile, The sacralization of politics in fascist Italy, trans. K. Botsford, Cambridge MA, 1996, pp. 1–18; idem, Le religioni della politica. Fra democrazia e totalitarismi, Rome and Bari, 2001; M. Ridolfi, C. Brice and F. de Giorgi, ‘Religione civile e identità nazionale nella storia d'Italia: per una discussione’, Memoria e Ricerca, 13, 2003, pp. 133–52.
14. On the ‘national pantheon’ of great Italians, see E. Irace, Italie glorie. La costruzione di un pantheon nazionale, Bologna, 2003, pp. 121–208. See also Levra, Fare gli italiani, pp. 27, 153–4, and M. Isnenghi, L'Italia in piazza. I luoghi della vita pubblica dal 1848 ai nostri giorni, Milan, 1994, pp. 24–7.
15. Isnenghi, L'Italia in piazza, p. 25. For a comprehensive list of the monuments to Garibaldi in Italy, see G. Massobrio and L. Capellini, L'Italia per Garibaldi, Milan, 1982.
16. Levra, Fare gli italiani, pp. 153–4.
17. Duggan, Francesco Crispi, pp. 693–4; the quote by Crispi is on p. 294.
18. E. Garibaldi (ed.), Qui sostò Garibaldi. Itinerari garibaldini in Italia, Fasano, 1982; J. Grévy, Garibaldi, Paris, 2001, pp. 160–2.
19. One survey of commemorative pamphlets and patriotic ephemera published in this period has found that those dedicated to Garibaldi almost outnumber those of all other Italian national heroes put together.
F. Dolci, ‘L'editoria d'occasione del secondo Ottocento nella Biblioteca di storia moderna e contemporanea di Roma’, in Il mito del Risorgimento, p. 146.
20. Grévy, Garibaldi, pp. 146–60.
21. J. Woodhouse, Gabriele D'Annunzio. Defiant archangel, Oxford, 1998, p. 196.
22. Grévy, Garibaldi, pp. 183–201; M. Isnenghi, ‘Usi politici di Garibaldi dall'interventismo al fascismo’, in F. Mazzonis (ed.), Garibaldi condottiero. Storia, teoria, prassi, Milan, 1984, pp. 533–40; M. Brignoli, ‘Bruno, Costanzo e la presenza garibaldina nella grande guerra’, in Z. Ciuffoletti et al. (eds), I Garibaldi dopo Garibaldi. La tradizione famigliare e l'eredità politica, Manduria, 2005, pp. 155–64.
23. C. Fogu, ‘“To make history”: Garibaldianism and the formation of a fascist historic imaginary’, in A. Russell Ascoli and K. von Henneberg (eds), Making and remaking Italy. The cultivation of national identity around the Risorgimento, Oxford, 2001, pp. 203–40.
24. On the film, see D. Forgacs, ‘Nostra patria: revisions of the Risorgimento in the cinema’, ibid., esp. pp. 257–63. For a general discussion of the uses of the Garibaldi myth during Fascism see Grévy, Garibaldi, pp. 202–12; Isnenghi, ‘Usi politici di Garibaldi’, pp. 540–4.
25. M. Isnenghi, ‘Garibaldi’, in idem (ed.), I luoghi della memoria. Personaggi e date dell'Italia unita, Rome and Bari, 1997, pp. 41–3; Grévy, Garibaldi, pp. 212–18.
26. On which, see S. Gundle, ‘The “civic religion” of the Resistance in post-war Italy’, Modern Italy, 5/2, 2000, pp. 113–32.
27. Grévy, Garibaldi, pp. 223–9, 241–56.
28. On the role and purpose of the ‘exemplary life’ in modern politics, see G. Cubitt, ‘Introduction: heroic reputations and exemplary lives’, in idem and A. Warren (eds), Heroic reputations and exemplary lives, Manchester, 2000, esp. pp. 7–9.
29. Among the most important of these biographies of Garibaldi are G. Guerzoni, Garibaldi, Firenze, 1882; J. White Mario, Garibaldi e i suoi tempi, Milan, 1884; G. E. Curàtolo, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Rome, 1925; and G. Sacerdote, La vita di Giuseppe Garibaldi, Milan, 1933. The Garibaldi ‘trilogy’ published in England by G. M. Trevelyan between 1907 and 1911 takes an equally reverent attitude towards its subject matter, but for less immediate (although no less evident) political reasons.
30. On this trend in the political arena, see M. Marsili, ‘De Gasperi and Togliatti: political leadership and personality cults in post-war Italy’, Modern Italy, 3/2, 1998, pp. 249–61.
31. A. M. Ghisalberti, ‘Di una buona bibliografia e di alcuni discutibili giudizi’, Rassegna Storica del Risorgimento, 58, 1971, pp. 629–30.
32. Idem, ‘Ancora sulla partecipazione popolare nel Risorgimento’, ibid., pp. 31–3, 1944–6, p. 6, his emphasis.
33. Idem, Momenti e figure del Risorgimento romano, Milan, 1965, p. 183.
34. Ibid., p. 189. The titles of the essays included here are themselves revealing: ‘Among the minor figures of the Roman Risorgimento’ (‘Fra i minori del Risorgimento romano’) and ‘Pietro Rosselli, a forgotten figure of '49’ (‘Pietro Rosselli, un dimenticato del '49’).
35. Quoted in D. Mack Smith, Cavour and Garibaldi. A study in political conflict, Cambridge, 2nd edn, 1985, p. x.
36. L. Riall, ‘Rivoluzione, repubblicanesimo e Risorgimento: Roma e i suoi storici, 1798–99 e 1849’, Roma moderna e contemporanea, 9/1–3, 2001, pp. 291–2.
37. For a discussion, see Grévy, Garibaldi, pp. 229–41. A partial exception to this rule, as Grévy argues, is the work of Denis Mack Smith, but this is hardly surprising since he comes from a different (Anglo-Saxon) historiographical tradition with different institutional constraints (and Mack Smith himself stresses his position as an outsider in Cavour and Garibaldi, pp. xi–xii).
38. A. Gramsci, Il Risorgimento, Turin, 1949.
39. The literature on Gramsci's analysis of the Risorgimento is very substantial. In English, see, in particular, J. A. Davis, ‘Introduction: Antonio Gramsci and Italy's passive revolution’, and P. Ginsborg, ‘Gramsci and the era of the bourgeois revolution in Italy’, both in J. A. Davis (ed.), Gramsci and Italy's passive revolution, London, 1979. For a brief summary, see L. Riall, Sicily and the unification of Italy. Liberal policy and local power, 1859–1866, Oxford, 1998, pp. 8–14.
40. Riall, ‘Roma e i suoi storici’, p. 290.
41. See Ghisalberti's remarks in the premessa to Momenti e figure del Risorgimento, pp. x–xii, and the comments of Franco della Peruta about Morelli in ‘Il Mazzini di Emilia Morelli’, Rassegna Storica del Risorgimento, 82/4, 1995, pp. 513–14.
42. A. Gramsci, Selections from prison notebooks, ed. and trans. Q. Hoare and G. Nowell Smith, London, 1971, pp. 61, 204.
43. For a summary of the findings of Italian social historians, see L. Riall, The Italian Risorgimento. State, society and national unification, London, 1994, esp. pp. 20–49.
44. E. Gellner, Nations and nationalism, Oxford, 1983; E. Hobsbawm, Nations and nationalism since 1780, London, 1990; B. Anderson, Imagined communities, London, 1991 edn.
45. See the comments by Hobsbawm on why in general ‘historians should address their attention to such phenomena’ in E. Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction, inventing traditions’, in idem and T. Ranger (eds), The invention of tradition, Cambridge, 1983, p. 12.
46. A. M. Banti, La nazione del Risorgimento. Parentela, santità e onore alle origini dell'Italia unita, Turin, 2000. He discusses and lists the ‘canonical’ texts on pp. 44–55.
47. See I. Porciani, ‘Stato e nazione: l'immagine debole dell'Italia’, in S. Soldani and G. Turi (eds), Fare gli Italiani. Scuola e cultura nell'Italia contemporanea, Bologna, 1993, 1, pp. 385–428.
48. See the analyses in Grévy, Garibaldi, pp. 139–267 and Isnenghi, ‘Garibaldi’.
49. F. della Peruta, ‘Il mito del Risorgimento e l'estrema sinistra dall'Unità al 1914’, in Il mito del Risorgimento, pp. 32–70.
50. Fogu, ‘To make history’, pp. 206–15.
51. M. Agulhon, ‘Le mythe de Garibaldi en France de 1882 à nos jours’, in idem, Histoire vagabonde, vol II. Idéologie et politique dans la France du XIXe siècle, Paris, 1988, pp. 85–131. For the myth of Garibaldi in England, see Beales, ‘The politics of Italian enthusiasm’, and M. Finn, After Chartism. Class and nation in English radical politics, Cambridge, 1993, pp. 189–223; and in Germany, C. Dipper, ‘Helden überkreuz oder das Kreuz mit den Helden’, in Jahrbuch des Historischen Kollegs, Munich, 1999. For a general discussion, see Grévy, Garibaldi, pp. 93–138.
52. Scirocco, Garibaldi; D. Pick, Rome or death. The obsessions of General Garibaldi, London, 2005; M. Schwegman, ‘In love with Garibaldi: romancing the Risorgimento’, European Review of History–Révue européene d'Histoire, 12/2, 2005, pp. 363–81. Grévy, Garibaldi, looks directly at the myth of Garibaldi but focuses largely on the period after his death.
53. C. Crocella, ‘La storiografia su Garibaldi militare’, in Mazzonis (ed.), Garibaldi condottiero, p. 481.
54. R. Villari, ‘La prefigurazione politica del giudizio storico su Garibaldi’, Studi Storici, 23/2, 1982, pp. 261–4.
55. In his 1954 study, Cavour and Garibaldi, Denis Mack Smith observed Garibaldi's capacity for political realism, while in 1963 Virgilio Titone made a plea for historians to look more seriously at Garibaldi's political strategy (‘Garibaldi’, in Quaderni Storici, 2, 1963, pp. 52–65, with a translated extract published in Mack Smith (ed.), Garibaldi, pp. 168–73). Both Rosario Villari and Franco della Peruta have suggested that Garibaldi was both more representative and more politically astute than traditional Risorgimento historiography would have us believe (Villari, ‘La prefigurazione politica’; F. della Peruta, ‘Garibaldi fra mito e politica’, Studi Storici, 23/1, 1982, pp. 5–22). However, none of these useful suggestions has given rise to more in-depth research.
56. For a comparison, see Alan Forrest on Napoleonic strategy: ‘Propaganda and the legitimation of power in Napoleonic France’, French History, 18/4, 2004, pp. 426–45; and, for an earlier period, P. Burke,
The fabrication of Louis XIV, New Haven, CT, and London, 1992.
57. D. Cannadine, G.M. Trevelyan. A life in history, London, 1992, p. 67.
58. A. D. Smith, ‘National identity and myths of ethnic descent’, in idem, Myths and memories of the nation, Oxford, 1999, p. 58.
59. See the comments of R. Girardet, Mythes et mythologies politiques, Paris, 1986, pp. 13–14.
60. On the use of symbols in the construction of political authority, see D. Kertzer, Rituals, politics and power, New Haven, CT, 1988; and G. Schöpflin, ‘The function of myth and a taxonomy of myths’, in G. Hosking and G. Schöpflin (eds), Myths and nationhood, London, 1997, pp. 19–35. R. Gewarth, The Bismarck myth. Weimar Germany and the legacy of the Iron Chancellor, Oxford, 2005, B. Schwartz, George Washington. The making of an American symbol, New York, 1987, and I. Kershaw, The ‘Hitler myth’. Image and reality in the Third Reich, Oxford, 1987, have been of particular help to me in understanding the political function of hero cults.
61. On this point, see most obviously G. Mosse, The nationalisation of the masses. Political symbolism and mass movements in Germany from the Napoleonic wars through the Third Reich, New York, 1975, esp. pp. 6–12.
62. M. Weber, Economy and society, 2 vols, Berkeley, CA, 1978, 2, pp. 241–2.
63. E. Shils, ‘Charisma, order and status’, American Sociological Review, April 1965, p. 200; C. Geertz, ‘Centers, kings and charisma: reflections on the symbolics of power’, in J. Ben-David and T. Nichols Clark (eds), Culture and its creators. Essays in honor of Edward Shils, Chicago, 1977, p. 171.
64. Shils, ‘Charisma’, pp. 200–1.
65. This is a feature of political charisma in Italy more generally. See S. Gundle and L. Riall, ‘Introduction’ to ‘Charisma and the cult of personality in modern Italy’, Modern Italy, 3/2, 1999, p. 157.
66. For instance, C. Lindholm's interesting study, Charisma, Cambridge, MA, 1990, focuses entirely on right-wing dictators and violent cult leaders like Charles Manson. Kertzer, Rituals, is one of the few studies which considers revolutionary movements as well as rulers in analysing the uses of political symbolism.
