Böcker av Maurizio Isabella

An examination of revolutions in the Iberian and Italian peninsulas, Sicily and Greece in the 1820s that reveals a popular constitutional culture in the SouthAfter the turbulent years of the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna's attempt to guarantee peace and stability across Europe, a new revolutionary movement emerged in the southern peripheries of the continent. In this groundbreaking study, Maurizio Isabella examines the historical moment in the 1820s when a series of simultaneous uprisings took the quest for constitutional government to Portugal, Spain, the Italian peninsula, Sicily and Greece. Isabella places these events in a broader global revolutionary context and, decentering conventional narratives of the origins of political modernity, reveals the existence of an original popular constitutional culture in southern Europe. Isabella looks at the role played by secret societies, elections, petitions, protests and the experience of war as well as the circulation of information and individuals across seas and borders in politicising new sectors of society. By studying the mobilisation of the army, the clergy, artisans, rural communities and urban populations in favour of or against the revolutions, he shows that the uprisings in the South-although their ultimate fate was determined by the intervention of more powerful foreign countries-enjoyed considerable popular support in ideologically divided societies and led to the introduction of constitutions. Isabella argues that these movements informed the political life of Portugal and Spain for many decades and helped to forge a long-lasting revolutionary tradition in the Italian peninsula. The liberalism that emerged as a popular political force across southern Europe, he contends, was distinct from French and British varieties.

"In most histories of what is often called the Age of Revolution, specifically from the French Revolution in 1789 to the Revolutions of 1848, Southern Europe is largely absent or plays, to say the least, a very marginal role. This book is a new history of the revolutions of the early 1820s, when the desire for freedom and emancipation found expression in uprisings in Portugal, Spain, the Italian peninsula, Sicily and Greece. While each of these revolutions had its peculiar features and belonged at the same time to a global revolutionary South extending from Latin America to Asia, this book will highlight the converging features, exchanges, and connections among them. The book explores practices and ideas that shaped these revolutions, such as the role played by secret societies, elections, the experience of war mobilization as well as transnational circulation of information, individuals, and printed material in politicizing new sectors of society. Maurizio Isabella challenges what he sees as enduring notions of these revolutions as weak or elitist in nature and argues that while their fate was determined by the intervention of more powerful foreign countries, they actually enjoyed considerable popular support in highly ideologically divided societies. The book then revises our understanding of the Age of Revolution, which until now is almost exclusively understood as cantering around the North Atlantic and France, and helps us to rethink the origins of political modernity in Europe"--