Southern Europe in the Age of Revolutions - by Maurizio Isabella

About the Book

"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"--

Book Synopsis

An examination of revolutions in the Iberian and Italian peninsulas, Sicily and Greece in the 1820s that reveals a popular constitutional culture in the South

After 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.

Review Quotes

"Winner of the National Risorgimento Prize, Italian Ministry of Culture"

"Winner of the Giuseppe Galasso History Prize, Neapolitan History Society"

"Shortlisted for the Laura Shannon Prize, Nanovic Institute for European Studies"

"Southern Europe in the Age of Revolutions makes an important contribution to scholarly understandings of the Age of Revolutions"---Evan Rothera, World History Encyclopedia

"With an elegant narrative, Isabella presents a brilliant and comprehensive lesson in global history, which, through extensive research, combines general frameworks, detailed closeups and biographical profiles and embraces and compares the various contexts that intersect among them. . . .An outstanding fresco of nineteenth-century Mediterranean Europe through the lens of the 1820s revolutions - a transformative political period."---Elena Bacchin, Modern Italy

"[Isabella] deserves praise and recognition for a new standard work in Southern European historiography. Highly readable, well composed and repeatedly describing relatively unknown local case studies, the study proves to be a treasure trove for anyone who wishes to work on the age of revolutions in the Southern European-Mediterranean region in the future. . . .Thanks to Maurizio Isabella's seminal work on the 1820s revolutions, Southern Europe is definitely back on the mental map of 19th-century historians."---Jens Späth, H-Soz-Kult

"Longlisted for the Runciman Award, Anglo-Hellenic League"

"An ambitious, highly analytical study of revolutionary movements in Southern Europe during the early 19th century."-- "Choice Reviews"

"An impressive book. . . . Exemplary of how revolutions and revolutionary culture should be studied. . . .[The] book will no doubt become a standard work for future research on the age of (counter)revolution."---Matthijs Lok, Austrian History Yearbook

"With magisterial fairness, Isabella assesses the ultimate failure and legacy of these revolutions, showing how they were a vital checkpoint on the road to defining representative government and our democratic practices."---Ambrogio A. Caiani, Shepherd.com

"[A] very considerable achievement."---Roger Price, Intelligence and National Security

"[A] pathbreaking book."---Andrew Moravcsik, Foreign Affairs

"Isabella's book resists sub-disciplinary pigeonholing. At a push, it might be described as a peculiarly richly-textured combination of social, political, intellectual, institutional and cultural history. It adds up to a genuinely new history of revolutionary cultures in post-Napoleonic Europe, and it is, in a word, brilliant."---Alex Middleton, The Critic

"[A] transformational account."---Abigail Green, London Review of Books

"Winner of the Fondazione Roma Sapienza Book Prize"

About the Author

Maurizio Isabella is professor of modern history at Queen Mary University of London. He is the author of Risorgimento in Exile and the coauthor of Mediterranean Diasporas: Politics and Ideas in the Long Nineteenth Century.