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Abstract
In I promessi sposi, Manzoni provides, in his representations of Spanish relations of ruling, both glimpses of an economy that has begun to link to a world capitalist system and glimpses of resistance to this globalizing model. I investigate the continuity of this resistance from the time of the Spanish occupation (represented in the novel) to later archival texts that document Austrian efforts, in the Lombard countryside, to control the movements of malviventi and the spread of the cholera epidemic (1836). I suggest that, though Manzoni’s novel is indisputably a classic of Italian literature and European Romanticism, it can also be read productively against the grain of both national and regional literatures; as a work that resonates with other world literatures, the novel also represents alternatives to the nation, economy, and culture that were negotiated in Italian and other nationalist projects of the nineteenth century.
Notes
* Many people have supported the development of this essay. At the very beginning, Giovanni Liva, at the Archivio di Stato di Milano, generously shared bibliography related to my research questions. Over many years, I have benefitted from conversation with and feedback from many colleagues and friends, including Jaime Concha, Marta Sánchez, Lisa Lowe, Jin-kyung Lee, Margaret Loose, Gloria Chacón, Sal Nicolazzo, Sarah Parisio, Alberto Rollo, Luciano Casali, Dianella Gagliani, Vittorio Scotti Douglas, Daniela Romagnoli, Clarissa Clo, and the Italian Culture reviewers. To all, I would like to express warm gratitude (taking responsibility, of course, for any shortcomings).
1 All translations are my own. I quote primarily in English except where references to the original languages are indispensable.
2 See, in particular, Della Coletta, who demonstrates how the genre of historical fiction involves, by definition, the application of present “interpretative codes to past reality” (11). She cites (228–9, n. 32) Manzoni’s famous words: “non è forse l’interesse delle cose presenti che principalmente ci muove ad esaminare le passate? … E quando ci vien proposto di esaminare qualche avvenimento che non abbia una relazione diretta colle cose nostre presenti … non diciamo che la ricerca non è interessante?” Examining the theoretical discourse on historical fiction, from Tommaseo and Mazzini to Lukács, Jameson, Collingwood and White, Della Coletta highlights, in the connections between past and present, “allegories of the present” (48), “subliminal or explicit political messages” (48), and a “provocation of the reader’s curiosity” as a “present interpreter” of the past (Citation1996, 64).
3 In examining “continuities” between Spanish and Austrian relations of ruling, I do not intend to suggest any equation between the two occupations. Rather, I follow Pastore (ix–xi), who, following Marx, Bloch, Braudel, and Berengo, understands comparative history as “a technique of going deeper into the description and analysis of analogous occurrences [fatti] plucked from dissimilar situations” (xi). My analysis is also in keeping with the extensive historical research that has, in recent decades, revised our understanding of the Spanish occupation of Lombardy, demonstrating that this period was one of economic dynamism and growth that influenced the evolution of future development. See, in particular, De Luca and Sabatini (Citation2012).
4 For the idea of “potentials etched within,” see Silverblatt (Citation1991, 166). I am indebted for my conceptualization of a “transnational” reading to Inderpal Grewal (Citation1996, 17), who broadens our interpretive view to include “geopolitical forces that are the condition of possibility for comparative analysis”; and to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, who, replacing the traditional “comparative gesture” (Citation2009, 303) with her “examination of transnational complicities” (289), encourages us to examine colonial situations from multiple sites.
5 “Son tan grandes las necessidades, que no bastarían siete Peru para remediarlas.” Chabod (Citation1971, 52–53 and n.2) quotes this letter of November 25, 1537, from Gómez Suárez de Figueroa, Spanish ambassador in Genova, to Caracciolo (ASM, Doc. dipl., 23 [Io] f. 322). See also Chabod (Citation1961, ch. 3): “Oro di Milano, oro di Castiglia, oro d’America;” and Elliott (1992, 82) who quotes a letter of 1570 from the governor of Milan to Philip II: “These Italians, although they are not Indians, have to be treated as such, so that they will understand that we are in charge of them and not they in charge of us.”
6 The presentation of Spanish as a language in common usage is particularly striking on the day of San Martino (187–193). Note, in particular, the mixing of Italian with the Spanish apparently understood easily by Melzi (and others). Does Manzoni create this code-switching between languages as a sort of linguistic realism representing the “sound” of Italian under Spanish occupation? Citing, towards the end of the novel, a document penned by Ferrer to the governor, he even suggests that official Italian was normally peppered with Spanish phrases (“quaranta uomini erano occupati en este exercicio,” “il podestà co’ soldati era andato a reconocer la casa,” 454). But even before the day of the riots, Manzoni suggests that Spanish had infiltrated the Italian of the ruling élite: “I deputati si radunarono, o come qui si diceva spagnolescamente nel gergo segretariesco d’allora, si giuntarono” (171).
7 Underlying, for example, Manzoni’s representations of the irrationality of those who believed that the plague was deliberately spread by untori are the provisions of Tadino and Settala, placing the pharmacists and speziali under surveillance in order to “distinguish without ambiguity” between authentic “antidotes against the plague” and “poisonous ointments meant to cause the plague.” For an important historical study of the question of the untori, see Brambilla (Citation1996, 307 and 313), who analyzes a volume of Avvertenze authored by Settala, translated by Tadino (and notably published in 1630 by the press of the Ambrosiana) regarding the preparation of medicines. She incisively remarks that the only real “criteria” of distinction between antidotes and poisonous ointments consisted in discourse, that is, in the “carattere pubblico, ufficiale e approvato della sua preparazione” and in the “uso morale che ne viene fatto” (313).
8 To be sure, Manzoni’s narrator does not sanction all colonial efforts to control the population, and especially the poor, through medical policies. For example, Manzoni’s narrator ironically disapproves of the official policy of giving a cash reward, from the public budget (amounting to 10,000 gold coins), for tying up and delivering to the lazzeretto those beggars who ignored the “public invitation” to come on their own (336–7). Bosco (Citation2015, 573) has noted, in Manzoni’s locution “i danari del pubblico si trovan sempre,” a critical shift from past to present, suggesting that the squandering of public funds was ongoing under Austrian rule. And given Manzoni’s liberal convictions, it is to be expected that his narrator would condemn the “abhorrent instruments of torture” that were erected throughout Milan, so that the Spanish rulers could mete out punishments “immediately” to the sick and the poor, assigning the most “arbitrary powers” to delegates in every neighborhood (407). This, for Manzoni, was only one of the occupiers’ “excessive and ineffective” measures against the plague (407). Still, in the end, Manzoni’s narrator makes it clear that he is allied with the medical authorities on the side of rationality and progress.
9 Although Manzoni does not explicitly identify Borromeo as a harbinger of modernity, he does draw ample attention to the importance of his contribution to “public culture” (“coltura pubblica,” 261), underscoring his status as founder of the Ambrosiana Library, one of the first libraries in Europe to open to the public, in 1609. We might see the foundation of the Ambrosiana (and the publication of its catalogue), together with the Mazarine Library (1644) and the Bodleian Library (1602), as early instruments of state formation, destined as they were to promote a particular sort of commerce of knowledge among the European élites. As Manzoni notes (260), Borromeo ordered the Ambrosiana’s librarian to “maintain exchange with the most learned men of Europe, in order to hear from them about the state of learning.” See also Jed (Citation2011, 89–90) and White (Citation1982, 117): “The social function of a properly disciplined study of history and the political interests which it served at its inception in the early nineteenth century, the period of the consolidation of the (bourgeois) nation-state, are well known and hardly in need of documentation.”
10 Compare the way in which Manzoni’s narrator (334) reproduces these small administrative units within which the political class attempted to contain the plague, writing: “in a hundred other parts [of the city], people fell, languished, and died without help, without relief.”
11 For Manzoni’s critique of lacunas in the historical representation of social totalities, see his Discorso sopra alcuni punti della storia longobarda in Italia, ch. 2 (cited by Della Coletta [Citation1996, 61] and Fortini [Citation2003, 1474]): “Un’immensa moltitudine d’uomini, una serie di generazioni che passa sulla terra, sulla sua terra, inosservata, senza lasciarvi traccia, è un tristo ma importante fenomeno; e le cagioni d’un tal silenzio possono riuscire ancor più istruttive che molte scoperte di fatto.”
12 Note that the range of territories included in Manzoni’s “everywhere (“per tutto”) is extensive: “il territorio di Lecco, la Valsassina, le coste del lago di Como, i distretti denominati il Monte di Brianza, e la Gera d’Adda” (364).
13 Aside from don Rodrigo, who had connections to the Spanish rulers, those bravi who tyrannized the towns and rural areas were more like “persistent illnesses” [malattie ostinate]” (10) than potential allies of the Spanish occupation.
14 Later, Bortolo will begin to explain this change to Renzo as “un altro par di maniche” (211) –a whole different story or another kettle of fish.
15 See De Luca (Citation2017, 493–4).
16 Note the persistence of this type of language up until the present day in the U.S., where one of the many derogatory terms for immigrants from Mexico is “beaner.”
17 This misery was further exacerbated by the presence of occupying troops, who, lodged in peasants’ houses, behaved like an “enemy invader,” squandering their food and forcing them in some cases to abandon their fields (147).
18 The text mentions in particular rumors of “secret” corn trade (“granaglie,” 148) and documented wheat trade between Bergamo and Turkey (212).
19 See also Liva (Citation1995, 294–5), who discusses this chain of effects.
20 “tutto era a buon mercato, essendoci molta più roba che gente che la comprassero” (449). De Luca (Citation2017, 487) cites this phrase to demonstrate Manzoni’s understanding of how prices are established in a competitive market.
21 See Ileto (146), who would understand the changing of Renzo’s name as a natural corollary of his condition of being “bandito” from the state of Milan: “the bandit often lacked a proper Christian name and lineage, or was known by an alias signifying a certain character or physical trait. He was illiterate, yet held in awe by the common folk for his bravery and invulnerability.”
22 Recall how Don Abbondio, in a fitful sleep at novel’s beginning, intuits (22) the connections between banditry, flight from authorities, pursuits of adversaries, and violence: “che sogni! Bravi, don Rodrigo, Renzo viottole, rupi, fughe, inseguimenti, grida, schioppettate.” And at the novel’s end he intuits (456) the Foucauldian connections between plague, disorder, and discipline: “la peste – è anche stata una scopa; ha spazzato via certi soggetti, che … non ce ne liberavamo più.”
23 Several scholars have made this important argument. See, in particular, De Luca and Sabatini (Citation2012) and note 3 above.
24 See Ileto (144): “Much of recent Philippine social history deals with the expansion of the frontiers, the rise of cash crop agriculture and urban entrepots, the links of the Philippine economy to the world capitalist system, and the activities of the increasingly entrepreneurial principalia/Chinese mestizo class. After all, these are what the colonial archives tell us most about. But there are ‘cracks in the parchment curtain,’ through which we can fleetingly glimpse the unique ways in which Filipinos reacted to Spanish rule.”
25 ASCM, Consiglio comunale, cartella 32, fascicolo 525, 20 luglio 1836, 2v-3r and 3v. The locution, “in massimo possono bramarsi provvidenze,” recalls, in particular, the words of Manzoni’s Spanish governor (cited above).
26 Fortini (Citation2003) cites a “sharp Italian critic” in making this affirmation.
27 Other employers in this account (9–10) were condemned for shutting down their operations, leaving their impoverished spinners “without resources in their moments of greatest need;” or for keeping their businesses open, proclaiming that news of the epidemic was fake, “that precautions were useless, and that quarantines and inspections were only instances of odious oppression [vessazione odiosa].”
28 See Ileto (144): “What needs to be pointed out in an alternative history is that fine, humanitarian objectives mask other dimensions of colonial health and welfare measures: the ‘disciplining’ of the masses, the supervision and regulation of more and more aspects of life, and the suppression or elimination of what the state perceived as forms of resistance, disorder, and irrationality. The participation of natives in colonial health and sanitation matters implicates them in the process.”
29 In particular, the “disorderly” nature of country folk is represented in the text as the root cause of the epidemic: “Il morbo … irruppe nuovamente … Sulle prime furono pochi casi sparsi qua e là, per lo più gente disordinata, come se ne trova dovunque anche alla campagna. L’abitudine allo stravizzo, logorando le fonti della vita, come dà all’individuo una maggiore disposizione a ricevere il morbo, così lo rende anche più grave” (11-12).
30 ASCM, Consiglio comunale, cartella 32, fascicolo 525, 20 luglio 1836, 2v: “non si può d’ordinario procurare un perfetto isolamento degli infetti senza produrre danni talvolta peggiori del male che si vuol evitare.”
31 “Si comincia a sussurare [sic] che si portano via come colerosi ammalati di ogni altra malattia e si finisce col credere alle solite folle [sic] di avvelenamento per disfarsi della poveraglia… Altri parlavano di congiure dei ricchi contro i poveri, alcuni accusavano perfino i governi complici delle stragi” (12–13).
32 Pietro Canetta (Citation1884, 31), 1836 13 luglio (N. 3399 del 1836 Direzione).
33 Quijano (Citation1993, 142) suggests that the “rationality” we are “accustomed to calling modernity” (produced by the European encounter with the Americas) was unable to extinguish those “social institutions and forms of thought, established around reciprocity, solidarity, the control of chance, and the joyous intersubjectivity of collective work and communion with the world.”
34 See note 3.
35 For a vivid scholarly picture of the public health structures and the various challenges faced by Austrian rulers in the face of poverty, social disorder, and a hunger for progress and modernization, see Zocchi (Citation2006, Citation2007).
36 ASM, Giustizia punitiva p. m. cartella 35, Lodi e Crema 15 ottobre 1833.
37 Ibid.
38 ASM, Giustizia punitiva p. m. cartella 35, Mantova, 22 settembre 1833.
39 ASM, Giustizia punitiva p. m. cartella 35, Saronno, 10 ottobre 1833.
40 ASM, Giustizia punitiva p. m. cartella 35, Provincia di Milano, 29 ottobre 1833. The phrase–“specialmente a favore de’ contrabbandieri in qualche paese confinante all’estero”–could express a certain awareness of the arbitrariness of borders in determining economic relations between people.
41 Peroni’s classificatory categories (Citation1976) for the Archivio di Stato of Milan might help to elaborate on such illicit alliances. Aside from obvious subject-headings–banditi, ribelli, tumulti–that could point to documents and evidence of resistance of individuals or groups to the Austrian occupation, there are other subject-headings, like Unioni clandestine e Unioni di persone sospette, tumultuose, that could bring to light images of communities with alternative visions.
42 If we can reimagine this figure of purported social disorder–il vagabondo, il malvivente–as endeavoring instead to organize a vision that resisted the seemingly “inevitable” one of agrarian capitalism, might we also identify the survival of this vision in the 20th century ideals of the partisan brigades or the Cervi family?
43 “Rizal has analyzed one of the many versions of agricultural commercialization characteristic of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Landlordism spread worldwide in this period. It is a story we have often encountered–Fukutake on rural Japan, Fei on village China, da Cunha on the backlands of Brazil, Flores Galindo on the Andean utopia, Plaatje on South Africa. The process through which commercial agriculture replaced subsistence throughout most of the world took several human lifetimes and obliterated many lives.”
44 As is well-known, Manzoni’s own political and cultural engagement also extended to Latin America and the Caribbean. As Fortini notes (Citation2003, 1474), Manzoni, in his Osservazioni sulla morale cattolica, condemns the cruel, unjust treatment of indigenous populations at the hands of Pizarro and the Spaniards. Fortini also points (1477-78) to Manzoni’s engagement, in his 1819 revision of “La Pentecoste,” with the Latin American wars of independence from Spain and with the continuing struggles of the people of Haiti after the abolition of slavery.
45 See, for example, the trial of Raimondo Doria (ASM, Processi politici 112 – 1830–1833), accused of alto tradimento in 1830 for his association with Mazzini and the carboneria. Della Coletta (Citation1996, 23ff) examines the influential figure of Paride Zaiotti, a literary critic who participated in this trial. She shows, moreover, the extent to which intellectuals who supported Austrian rule contributed to the commercialization of book trade and generally enjoyed a benefit to their careers in return for their loyalty (225–6, n.16).
46 See Blengino (Citation1996, 38) and Goebel (Citation2010, 13–14), who observes that after his experiences in Brazil and Uruguay, Garibaldi’s “public appearance in Italy and across the world would henceforth be marked by the characteristic gaucho style of clothing that he brought back with him to Italy.”
47 See also Celarent: “this worldwide process was in some sense inevitable. But the great political and moral question is less about the process’s inevitability than about whether it could have occurred in some way that would not have ruined millions of human lives.”
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Stephanie Jed
Stephanie Jed is author of Chaste Thinking: The Rape of Lucretia and the Birth of Humanism (Indiana University Press, 1989) and Wings for Our Courage: Gender, Erudition, and Republican Thought (University of California Press, 2011). In the last several years, she has been investigating the interdependence of research in the sciences and the humanities (in the early modern period and in the twentieth century). This essay on Manzoni grew out of research in Milan in the Archivio di Stato di Milano and in the Archivio Storico Civico.