Southern Carbonari. Sectarianism, state, society in pre-unification Southern Italy

Marco Meriggi

doi:10.6093/978-88-6887-378-3

Southern Carbonari. Sectarianism, state, society in pre-unification Southern Italy

Authors

Marco Meriggi

University of Naples Federico II

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1883-7162

DOI: https://doi.org/10.6093/978-88-6887-378-3

Keywords:

Carboneria, Secret societies, Kingdom of Naples, Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Italian Risorgimento

Synopsis

Publisher: FedOA - Federico II University Press

Series: Clio. Essays in History, Archaeology and Art History

Pages: 207

Language: Italian

Abstract: Between the Napoleonic era and the early years of the Restoration, the Carbonari, a secret society that at that time had hundreds of thousands of members, enjoyed its golden age in southern Italy, giving rise to the largest phenomenon of politically progressive mobilisation that Italy experienced before the revolutions of 1848. The southern Carbonari adopted the lexicon of freedom and, between 1820 and 1821, loudly demanded it. These events are well known. In this book, however, we attempt to approach the subject from a different angle and show how the Carbonari were first of all an expression of the desire for social aggregation and collective cohesion in a world that was witnessing the decline of the feudal system and the simultaneous advance of modern statehood.

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Author Biography

Marco Meriggi, University of Naples Federico II

Marco Meriggi teaches History of Political Institutions at the Department of Humanities at the University of Naples Federico II. He is primarily interested in the relationship between political power and society from the 18th to the 20th century. He recently wrote La nazione populista. Il Mezzogiorno e i Borboni dal 1848 all’Unità (The Populist Nation: Southern Italy and the Bourbons from 1848 to Unification), Bologna, il Mulino 2021.