Garibaldi and the Risorgimento

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Giuseppe Garibaldi and the Italian Risorgimento. According to the historian AJP Taylor, Garibaldi was the only wholly admirable figure in modern history. Born in Nice in 1807, one of Garibaldi’s aims in life was the unification of Italy and, in large part thanks to him, Italy was indeed united substantially in 1861 and entirely in 1870. With his distinctive red shirt and poncho, he was a hero of Romantic revolutionaries around the world. His fame was secured when, with a thousand soldiers, he invaded Sicily and toppled the monarchy in the Italian south. The Risorgimento was soon almost complete.

This topic is the one chosen from over 750 different ideas suggested by listeners in October, for our yearly Listener Week.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Lucy Riall 2 episodes
  Professor of Comparative History of Europe at the European University Institute and Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London
• Eugenio Biagini No other episodes
  Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Cambridge
• David Laven No other episodes
  Associate Professor of History at the University of Nottingham

Reading list

• The Risorgimento and the Unification of Italy
  Derek Beales and Eugenio F. Biagini (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002) Google Books →
• The Italian Risorgimento
  Martin Clark (Longman, 2009) Google Books →
• The Origins of the Italian Wars of Independence
  Frank J. Coppa (Longman, 1992) Google Books →
• The Risorgimento and Unification (1789-1896) The Short Oxford History of Italy
  John A. Davis (ed.) (Oxford University Press, 2000)
• The Force of Destiny: A History of Italy Since 1796
  Christopher Duggan (Allen Lane, 2007) Google Books →
• The Making of Italy, 1796 - 1870
  Denis Mack Smith (Macmillan, 1968)
• Religion and Politics in the Risorgimento: Britain and the New Italy, 1861-1875
  Danilo Raponi (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) Google Books →
• Risorgimento: The History of Italy from Napoleon to Nation State
  Lucy Riall (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) Google Books →
• Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero
  Lucy Riall (Yale University Press, 2007) Google Books →
• Under the Volcano: Revolution in a Sicilian Town
  Lucy Riall (Oxford University Press, 2013) Google Books →
• Garibaldi: Citizen of the World: A Biography
  Alfonso Scirocco (Princeton University Press, 2007) Google Books →
• A History of Italy 1700 - 1860: The Social Constraints of Political Change
  Stuart Woolf (Methuen, 1979) Google Books →

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Programme ID: b083qx9j

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b083qx9j

Auto-category: 945 (Italian History)