Belliotti analyzes the role of positive duties in moral theory, the efficacy of theocratic republicanism, strategies for political revolutions, the implications of an enduring Sicilian ethos, and the profits and perils of the individual-community continuum, while distinctively interpreting the lives and ideologies of Mazzini, Gramsci, and Giuliano.
No other Auschwitz survivor has been as literarily powerful and influential as Primo Levi. But Levi was not only a victim or a witness. In the fall of 1943, at the very start of the Italian Resistance, he took part in the first efforts at guerrilla warfare against Nazi forces. Yet those months are strikingly unmentioned in Levi’s writings---aside from one obscure passage hinting that his deportation to Auschwitz was linked directly to an “ugly secret” from that time. What did Levi mean by those dramatic words? His small partisan band, it appears, had turned on itself, committing a brutal act against two of its own members. Using that shocking episode as a starting point, Sergio Luzzatto offers a rich examination of the early days of the Resistance, tracing vivid portraits of both rebels and Nazi collaborators. And he provides profound insight into the origins of the moral complexity that runs through the work of Primo Levi himself.
The Roman conquest of Italy in the Republican period led to widespread economic changes in which the conquered Italians played an important role. This volume explores the interplay between economic activities and the integration of the Italian peoples into the Roman civic, legal, social, and cultural framework.
Popular Protest and Ideals of Democracy in Late Renaissance Italy is the first study to analyse popular protest across the Italian peninsula and the Venetian colonies during the early modern period, 1494 to 1559. Drawing on over 100 contemporary chronicles and diaries, the fifty-eight volumes of Marin Sanudo's diplomatic dispatches, mercantile letters, and commentary, and 586 collective supplications scattered through archival sources from towns and villages in the Grand duchy of Milan, Samuel K. Cohn, Jr. places these incidents and their patterns in comparative perspectives, first with the late medieval heyday of popular revolt and then with regions north of the Alps. Cohn finds new developments during the early modern period such as an increase in women rebels, mutinies of soldiers, and new tactics of revolts such as shop closures, peaceful demonstrations of strength, and use of religious processions for discussions of tactics and strategies for obtaining logistic advantage. At the same time, these protests show convergences with the medieval Italian past, with leaders coming almost exclusively from the ranks of nonelites, religious ideology playing a surprisingly minor role, and the majority of revolts centring overwhelming in towns and cities. Finally, this study demonstrates that democracies do not just die under the duress of military occupation and growing powers of autocratic regimes. Ideals of representation and equality not only persisted; they could emerge in new forms and with greater sophistication.
An overview of world history from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries, including the French, American and Industrial Revolutions. Kovacs chooses pertinent stories which create a tapestry showing the development of humankind from medieval times, when every person had their place in the hierarchy of society, to the awakening of individuality in modern times. In the Steiner-Waldorf Education curriculum this period of history is taught in Class 8 (age 13-14).
In 133 and 123/122 BCE, the Gracchan reforms opened three cans of worms, pitting the Roman landowning elites against their poorer compatriots, Roman economic interests against those of the Italian allies, and senators against equestrians. As these cumulative divisions threatened to coalesce into a perfect storm, the noble and wealthy tribune of the plebs M. Livius Drusus in 91 boldly proposed a comprehensive if costly New Deal. The eventual annulment of Drusus’ visionary reform package set the stage for the armed rebellion of Rome’s key Italic allies. Even before the conclusion of this gargantuan struggle in 87, the deep divisions Drusus and his backers had sought to resolve, compounded by political discontent among the enfranchised Italians, caused the Roman polity to descend into a series of devastating civil wars, terminated in 82/81 by Sulla’s vindictive victory and reactionary new settlement. Offering a novel narrative analysis of the pivotal events of this well-known but often poorly understood period, this book seeks to demonstrate how the time from Livius Drusus’ tribunate of the plebs to Sulla’s unparalleled dictatorship was marked by momentous reform and experimentation and suggests that the former’s fateful failure arguably represents the moment the Romans lost their ancestral Republic.
Italians were the largest group of immigrants to the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, and hundreds of thousands led and participated in some of the period's most volatile labor strikes. Yet until now, Italian women's political activism
A Pulitzer Prize winner’s “fascinating” account of the political battles that led to the end of the Papal States (Entertainment Weekly). From a National Book Award–nominated author, this absorbing history chronicles the birth of modern Italy and the clandestine politics behind the Vatican’s last stand in the battle between the church and the newly created Italian state. When Italy’s armies seized the Holy City and claimed it for the Italian capital, Pope Pius IX, outraged, retreated to the Vatican and declared himself a prisoner, calling on foreign powers to force the Italians out of Rome. The action set in motion decades of political intrigue that hinged on such fascinating characters as Garibaldi, King Viktor Emmanuel, Napoleon III, and Chancellor Bismarck. Drawing on a wealth of secret documents long buried in the Vatican archives, David I. Kertzer reveals a fascinating story of outrageous accusations, mutual denunciations, and secret dealings that will leave readers hard-pressed to ever think of Italy, or the Vatican, in the same way again. “A rousing tale of clerical skullduggery and topsy-turvy politics, laced with plenty of cross-border intrigue.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review
Italian Women at War explores Italian women's participation in war and conflict throughout Italy's modern history, beginning with the Unification and ending with the twentieth century. The essays in this volume, help to further the discussion on women's participation in violence, warfare, and political protest throughout Italy.