Giuseppe Mazzini

Italian nationalist leader

• Born: June 22, 1805
• Birthplace: Genoa, Ligurian Republic (now in Italy)
• Died: March 10, 1872
• Place of death: Pisa, Italy

Mazzini was the most influential leader of the Risorgimento—the Italian national unification movement. His political activities and philosophy were carried beyond Italy and inspired fledgling nationalist and democratic reform movements throughout the world.

Early Life

The son of a well-to-do Genoese family, Giuseppe Mazzini (maht-TSEE-nee) was a sickly but precocious child, who could scarcely walk until the age of six. His mother, Maria Drago, practiced the morally rigorous Catholic doctrine of Jansenism and provided the young Mazzini with Jansenist tutors. His political education began at home under the influence of his father, Giacomo—a renowned physician and a professor at the University of Genoa. Mazzini’s father, like many educated Italians, had embraced the nationalist and democratic ideas of the French Revolution. These ideas endured even after the Napoleonic Wars, when authoritarian rule had been restored to the various Italian states. Giacomo and other Italian patriots nurtured hopes for democratic reform, independence from foreign rule, and ultimately a united Italy.

As a young man, Mazzini was deeply moved by the suffering of others and was recklessly generous in his charity. He tended to be melancholy, always dressed in black—as if in mourning—and enjoyed long, solitary walks. At the University of Genoa, he studied law, but his real interest was in history and literature. He organized a student group to study censored books and wrote provocative essays for several literary journals. The Italian universities during the 1820’s were a conduit for subversive political organizations. During his student years, Mazzini became involved with a secret revolutionary society—the Carbonaria. The July Revolution of 1830 in France inspired the group’s members, known as the Carbonari, to plot insurrections in Piedmont and other Italian states. Government officials uncovered the conspiracy and arrested hundreds of suspects, including Mazzini. He defended himself successfully in court, but the Piedmontese authorities forced him into exile. At the age of twenty-six, he left Genoa for France.

Life’s Work

The failure of the Carbonari insurrections during 1830-1831 led Mazzini to organize his own secret society, Young Italy . Through this group, he hoped to bring a youthful energy and idealism to the movement for Italian independence and unification. His sincerity and the quiet strength of his convictions won for him a devout following. His agents distributed the newspaper Young Italy and established affiliated societies throughout the Italian peninsula. In 1833, Mazzini joined with nationalists from other countries to found Young Europe. This organization embodied the aspirations of many European nationalities seeking to break free of the Austrian and Russian empires and to establish their own independent states with democratic institutions. Mazzini’s European network of secret societies made him a notorious figure. The Austrian government considered him an international terrorist, a threat to the entire European order. However, to the peoples of Europe who chafed under authoritarian rule, he appeared as a symbol of liberty.

The insurrections organized during the 1830’s by Mazzini and his followers failed to ignite a popular uprising in Italy. For his subversive activity, he received the death sentence in absentia from a Piedmontese court in 1833. His life in exile took him from France to Switzerland to Great Britain. He traveled like a fugitive—under the constant threat of arrest and imprisonment. To survive these difficult years in exile, he relied on the loyalty of his followers and the generous financial support from his mother. Once in London, he devoted his time to writing for popular journals and to publishing his own newspaper. His most notable work during his years in exile was Doveri dell’uomo (1860; The Duties of Man , 1862). Through his many editorials, essays, commentaries, and correspondence, he shaped and refined his political philosophy. He became a celebrated figure among intellectuals and reformers in Great Britain and the United States. At the same time, he generated international sympathy for the Italian cause.

Mazzini based his philosophy on a profound belief in God, in human progress, and in the fundamental unity and cooperation of humankind. The banner of Young Italy best summarized his thought: “Liberty, Equality, Humanity, Unity.” These words had universal application. For Mazzini, liberty meant the elimination of all despotism, from tyranny in Italy to slavery in the American South. His belief in equality extended to women as well as men, and for this he won the admiration and devotion of many women’s rights advocates in Europe and the United States. His faith in humanity was expressed in the Latin epithet Vox populi, vox Dei (the voice of the people is the voice of God). He believed that the Italian unity would be forged through a spontaneous, general uprising of the Italian people. Mazzini’s call for unity transcended national boundaries. He envisioned no less than a brotherhood of nations, beginning with a new federation of European states—a United States of Europe—with the new Italy in the vanguard.

Mazzini’s religious faith bordered on mysticism. However, despite his religious convictions and his Catholic education, he had no room for the authority of the pope, either as civil ruler of the Papal States or as the spiritual leader of the Christian world. Although sympathetic to the plight of the working class, he rejected the materialist, atheistic character of socialist philosophy and avoided emphasizing class conflict as the Marxists would later do. Instead, he advocated worker-aid associations and a spirit of cooperation between labor and capital. He sought to extend the Christian ethic from the home to the workplace to the halls of government and spoke more of duties and responsibilities than of rights and privileges.

The popular revolts in Europe during 1848-1849 gave Mazzini the opportunity to return to Italian soil. He arrived in Milan in April, 1848, shortly after the city’s heroic five-day uprising against Austrian rule. Despite the generous welcome extended to the exiled patriot, Mazzini represented only one of several political factions vying for leadership. He left Milan after a failed attempt to organize the city’s defenses against the returning Austrian army.

Mazzini’s second opportunity to create a new Italy came in November, 1848, when the populace of Rome revolted, drove Pope Pius IX from the city, and established a republican government in the Papal States. Mazzini entered Rome as an elected leader and immediately implemented his reform program. Church lands were confiscated and redistributed to the peasants, church offices became shelters for the homeless, and public works provided labor for the unemployed. The new republic lasted only a few months. In response to the pope’s plea for intervention, the French government dispatched an army to central Italy. The French occupied the Papal States and won control of Rome, despite a tenacious, monthlong defense of the city led by Giuseppe Garibaldi . Mazzini, devastated by the turn of events, left Rome and once again went into exile.

Mazzini’s direct influence on Italian politics waned after the failed revolutions of 1848 . The work of Italian unification passed to the hands of the Piedmontese prime minister Count Cavour, who preferred international diplomacy to popular uprisings to achieve his goals. Mazzini maintained contacts with republican groups who attempted several unsuccessful, sometimes tragic, insurrections during the 1850’s. These failures provoked public criticism even from his supporters. He made several secret trips to Italy and in one instance was arrested and imprisoned briefly near Naples.

Mazzini held stubbornly to his republican principles. Elected to the Italian parliament in 1865, he refused his seat because of the required oath of allegiance to the monarch. He also rejected the general amnesty offered to him by the king in 1871. He spent his last years in Pisa and lived to see Italy unified with Rome as its capital. His political legacy was continued by his followers, many of whom championed further democratic reforms in the parliamentary politics of postunification Italy.

Significance

Giuseppe Mazzini was the international spokesperson for Italian unification and the Italian people. Ironically, he knew little of his own country. He spent much of his life in exile and, before 1848, had never traveled in central or southern Italy. Much of his knowledge of Italy came from history texts and secondhand reports from visitors, and he did not have many contacts with working-class Italians. His concept of “the people” was a middle-class intellectual’s romanticized notion, far removed from the brutish existence of the Italian peasant.

Mazzini was not a profound philosopher; many of his writings are characterized by vagaries, inconsistencies, and temperamental ramblings. Despite these shortcomings, his life had a mythical, heroic quality, and his political philosophy had universal appeal. He personified the idealism, optimism, and faith in humanity that motivated many nineteenth century reformers in Europe and the United States. Even Indian and Chinese nationalists invoked Mazzini’s name in their efforts to create new democratic nations. They all found inspiration in his life and in his thoughts on political freedom, social equality, economic cooperation, and the brotherhood of nations.

Many of Mazzini’s ideas seemed unrealistic in his own time, but some had a prophetic ring, and others have become even more relevant in the twentieth century. His hopes for an Italian republic were finally realized in 1946. His proposals for worker associations and a reconciliation between labor and capital proved far more constructive than did Karl Marx’s vision of unmitigated class conflict, and his dream of a United States of Europe anticipated the post-World War II movement toward a unified European community.

Bibliography

Griffith, Gwilym O. Mazzini: Prophet of Modern Europe. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1932. The best written of the English biographies, this work offers an uncritical study with emphasis on Mazzini’s theology.

Hales, Edward E. Y. Mazzini and the Secret Societies. New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons, 1956. A critical study of Mazzini’s early years. Hales highlights the climate of conspiracy to which the young Mazzini was drawn and describes the making of the Mazzini “myth.” Contains a helpful annotated bibliography.

Hinkley, Edyth. Mazzini: The Story of a Great Italian. Reprint. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1970. First published in 1924, this sympathetic biography emphasizes Mazzini’s profound religious convictions and the universal character of his philosophy.

King, Bolton. Mazzini. London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1902. The first serious English study of Mazzini. King offers a generous portrayal of Mazzini as a historical agent of political and moral progress. Includes an appendix containing several of Mazzini’s letters and a bibliography listing many of Mazzini’s writings published in English during the nineteenth century.

Lovett, Clara M. The Democratic Movement in Italy, 1830-1876. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982. Places Mazzini in the broader context of a complex and diverse democratic political movement.

Mack Smith, Dennis. Mazzini. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994. Biography examining Mazzini’s ideological influence and his place within the political and intellectual climate of the mid-nineteenth century. Mack Smith portrays Mazzini as an astute but largely unrecognized prophet of the idea of European community.

Mazzini, Giuseppe. Life and Writings of Joseph Mazzini. 6 vols. London: Smith, Elder, 1890-1891. A comprehensive collection of Mazzini’s writings available in English.

Salvemini, Gaetano. Mazzini. Translated by I. M. Rawson. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1956. An English translation of Salvemini’s study, originally published in 1905 and revised in 1925. His commentary provides a good, critical introduction to Mazzini’s thought and writings but contains little biographical information.

Sarti, Roland. Mazzini: A Life for the Religion of Politics. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1997. Biography exploring the relationship between Mazzini’s life and his ideas.