‘The ink of the wise’: Mazzini, British Radicalism and Print Culture, 1848–1855

Abstract

The last decade or so has seen a marked revival of interest in Mazzini’s role in the Risorgimento and a far greater recognition of his contribution to the intellectual currents of the time, those which coalesced around ideas of nation building, self-determination, human rights and democracy.² To some extent this revisionism has been prompted by the Mazzini and Garibaldi bicentenaries, and the recent 150th anniversary of Italian unification.³ It is also refracted by the turn to transnationalism, an approach which does not diminish the centrality of an Italian focus for Risorgimento studies but rather one which locates it within an international framework — as part of a wider ‘transcontinental, transatlantic and progressive nineteenth-century movement’.⁴ This work has had an impact on British studies too, expanding on Margot Finn’s groundbreaking critique of post-Chartist politics to flesh out the complex milieu of London émigré society in which Mazzini’s republican ideas were variously debated, contested and embraced.⁵ Some of these studies have revisited Mazzini’s own writings and there is much to be said for deepening that critique.⁶ As a natural corollary to this reappraisal, this chapter seeks to explore more fully the world of radical print culture which enabled him to develop and disseminate a vision of democracy that transcended national boundaries.

Keywords

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

‘The ink of the wise is the match of the might of the sword’, G. Mazzini (1831) La Giovine Italia, and cited by R. Sarti (2000) ‘Giuseppe Mazzini and his opponents’, in J. A. Davis (ed.) Italy in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 82.