Cosmopolitan Italy in the Age of Nations

Modern Italian historiography has undergone a substantial revision in the last quarter of a century. From an almost exclusive focus on the process of nation-building, the attention of historians has shifted. The most innovative research is now devoted to assessing to what extent the cosmopolitan attitude that was evident in the late eighteenth century morphed, but did not disappear, in the ensuing two centuries. The essays in this volume make the case that the age of nations had a profound impact on Italian history and contributed to the creation of an Italian identity within the framework of well-functioning imperial and global networks. They also acknowledge that the process of national individualization carried with it a variety of aspects that reconnected Italian history to the foreign cultures that were undergoing constant self-fashioning. Cosmopolitan Italy in the Age of Nations: Transnational Visions from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century will be of interest to scholars throughout the world and intellectual and transnational historians.

Edoardo Tortarolo is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Eastern Piedmont, Italy. He received his PhD in history from the University of Turin in 1987. He is a permanent fellow of the Academy of the Sciences in Turin. He has co-edited the Oxford History of Historical Writing (2012).

Contributors Introduction Section 1 Italy and the Mediterranean 1. Renato Pasta, Reflections from the East: Experiences in the Levant of two eighteenth-century travellers (1760-1792) 2. Catia Papa, Crossing sights: Women and nation between Italy and Egypt 3. Cristina Baldazzi, Emerging Egypt looks to Italy: Relations and Interactions in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Arabic Sources Section 2 Visions of Italy 4. Roberta Gefter Wondrich, Charles Lever's Italy in the Risorgimento: An Anglo-Irish perspective 5. Irene Gaddo-Daniela Piemontino, Through the mists of Albion: the couple Ball-Parolini 6. Leonardo Buonomo, Beyond aesthetic consumption: Italy in Henry James's early travel literature Section 3 Italy in the Far East 7. Claudio Zanier, Acquiring advanced Italian technologies: The Japanese Silk and Silkworm Committee in Italy in 1873 8. Alessandro Di Meo, Italian explorations in Southeast Asia 9. Massimo De Grassi, Italian artistic culture in the Far East: Galileo Chini at the Siamese court in the early twentieth century Section 4 Transatlantic Italy 10. Matteo Sanfilippo, Exporting Italy across the Atlantic: The 'Romanization' of the North American dioceses and assistance to Italian emigrants 11. Irene Fattacciu, Circulation of knowledge, competing therapies and exotic drugs: The case of sarsaparilla and China root in early modern Italian medicine Section 5 A Florentine View 12. Igor Melani, The cradle of the Renaissance? Foreign travellers in Florence from the past to present-day times (1755-2020) Index