Venice remembered: identity and the uses of history in Risorgimento and Liberal Italy, 1915 - 1922

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This project will use nineteenth- and early twentieth-century writings on the Republic of Venice to explore and re-examine particularist and autonomous identities in Risorgimento and Liberal Italy. It will focus on the way in which history could stimulate or reinforce loyalties which did not correspond directly with the nationalist agenda of 'making Italians'. In particular, it will ask how far historical interpretations of the middle ages, renaissance and ancien regime privileged regional or municipal rather than national identities. The project will also challenge simplistic models of identity, which suggest a crude dichotomy between competing national and subnational allegiances. While it will investigate the extent to which localism could obstruct the growth of Italian sentiment, it will also examine how 'Venetianness' coexisted with 'Italianness', and the ways in which municipal pride provided a building block for patriotism. It will explore lines of continuity between historical writing in the years 1815-1922, and that of earlier centuries, to ask how far the changed representations of Venetian identity were the product of the application of new historical methodologies, and how far they were shaped by altered political circumstances, most notably regime change. The failure to develop a strong sense of nationhood is a constant and central theme in the history of modern Italy. The period 1815 to 1922 has traditionally been seen in terms of a struggle first to achieve national unification and independence from outside rule, and then to 'make' Italians. Over the last twenty years, an extensive historiography has emerged on the formation of Italian national identity in this period. The tendency of this research has been to privilege the national arena. While it recognises that Italy's strong tradition of campanilismo (parochialism - literally 'belltowerism') led inevitably to 'a weak fatherland', the emphasis has usually been on the failure to construct national identity rather than the reasons for the durability and vitality of sub-national allegiances. It has also continued to see localism as the key obstacle to the creation of a common sense of nation. In contrast, recent work on Germany has emphasised not only that strong local identities could co-exist with a sense of belonging to race and nation, but also might be seen as a prerequisite for successfully erecting the nation state. While exact parallels between the two countries cannot be made, the Italian case demands a comprehensive exploration of the significance of the local for the formation of national identity. Recent research has repeatedly acknowledged the way in which the past - especially the middle ages and the renaissance - was exploited in the creation of Italian identity. However, there has been little systematic assessment of the extent to which a focus on Italy's fragmented past fostered sub-national or anti-national feelings. Moreover, the rare studies of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Venetian historiography that do exist treat the subject in a virtual vacuum, ignoring both historians' influence upon, and the extent to which what they wrote was shaped by, contemporary politics. The proposed research has enormous contemporary resonance. The dismemberment of the Soviet Union; the fragmentation of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia; Scottish and Welsh devolution; the continued debate regarding the relationship between Spain and its regions; questions about the integration of immigrant minorities in western Europe; heightened debate about 'Europeanness' triggered by European expansion and issues surrounding a possible European constitution have all demonstrated that questions of national and local identity have remained central to our political and cultural lives in the last two decades. In Italy such issues remain doubly important because the past remains so deeply politicised and so viciously contested. Even 3 cursory look at non-academic internet sites reveals that the history of the Republic of Venice generates intense ideological passions more than two hundred years after its collapse. The continued role of the Lega Nord in domestic politics, notwithstanding its decline since the 1990s, coupled with the resilience of campanilismo almost a century and a half of unification suggest that the study of the bases of regional and local loyalties remains of undeniable significance. Venice remembered will cast new light on debates of immense topicality for modern Italian, European and global politics.