The nation as seen from below: Rome in 1870

Abstract

When Rome joined the Kingdom of Italy in 1870, its symbolic importance played a large part in its role as the new capital of the nation-state. That very symbolic weight, though, left but a small space for the Romans themselves, particularly the lower classes. While recent scholarship on Italian nation-building has explored the cultural project underlying its political developments, it still remains to be understood how the lower classes first experienced and responded to their incorporation into the nation. Courted by the new nation-state, its clerical opposition and its radical opposition alike, their Risorgimento was different from that of the Romantic tropes informing the new national politics.

Keywords:

• Rome
• Italy
• nation
• working classes
• 1870

Notes

 1. Comune di Roma Ufficio di Statistica e Censimento, Roma: Popolazione, 24–7. The illiteracy rates, admittedly, are ages seven and over, but given schooling patterns this only slightly tempers the statistic.

 2. Chabod, Italian Foreign Policy, 8.

 3. Caracciolo, Roma capitale, 58–60.

 4. Anderson, Imagined Communities (see especially ch. 5); Berger, “Class vs. Nation.”

 5. Denis Mack Smith was already revealing those shady political machinations in the 1950s, revelations made even more devastating by Roberto Martucci in L'invenzione dell'Italia unita. On the Risorgimento as cultural project, see for instance Ascoli and von Henneberg, eds, Making and Remaking Italy.

 6. Banti and Ginbsorg, Il Risorgimento; see also Banti, La nazione del Risorgimento and Riall, Garibaldi; in this exploration of the hero as a mass symbol, Riall points out that Garibaldi as an embodiment of the nation was only one of his numerous meanings. For a re-examination of the ‘failed nation’ paradigm, see her “Which Italy?”

 7. Patriarca, “Indolence and Regeneration”; on ozio, see Hughes, “The Theory and Practice of Ozio.”

 8. Demarco, Il Risorgimento e la ‘Question sociale’; De Mattei, “Le prime discussioni in Italia”; Quazza, “La lotta sociale nel Risorgimento”; Togliatti, “Le classi popolari nel Risorgimento.”

 9. Riall, Garibaldi, ch. 10 and Syrjämaa, Constructing Unity are examples of studies ultimately resorting to language like ‘it seems possible that …’ when grappling with popular interpretations.

10. Quoted in Mack Smith, Italy and its Monarchy, 42.

11. Bartoccini, La ‘Roma dei Romani’, 522. There is a wide-ranging literature on Italian designations of popular activity as brigandage, even beyond the most famous example of Southern rebellion in 1866; among recent work, see Ginsborg, “After the Revolution” and Grab, “State Power.”

12. Mack Smith, Italy and Its Monarchy, 37–41.

13. Borretti, Venticinque anni, 30.

14. Borretti, Venticinque anni, 30; Stock, Consular Relations, 320. It is likely though that Garibaldi's forces were equally cheered, possibly from similar fears of reprisal otherwise; see also Stefano Castagnola's memoir, Da Firenze a Roma and Keiger, Italy, 302.

15. On Cadorna, Pavone, “Alcuni aspetti,” 300; on Bixio, Martucci, L'invenzione dell'Italia unita, 170.

16. Perodi, Roma italiana, 25; O'Clery, Risorgimento controluce, 426–7.

17. Stock, Consular Relations, 354–5.

18. Ugo Pesci, Quando siamo entrati a Roma, 113–18.

19. Riall, Garibaldi, 273–5.

20. Keiger, Italy, 349. The display of lights in windows as a show of support was a demand of past revolutions as well.

21. Perodi, Roma italiana, 33.

22. Nino Carnevali, quoted in Perodi, Roma italiana, 35–6.

23. Patrick O'Clery, quoted in De Jaco, Antistoria di Roma Capitale, 723–4.

24. De Jaco, Antistoria, 773–4; d'Ideville, Rome and her Captors, 153. d'Ideville is admittedly open to more scepticism than even most contemporary sources, as he blithely assures his reader there is no reason to name the friend whose letters from Rome he here publishes (3).

25. Keiger, Italy, 362.

26. De Jaco, Antistoria, 713–4; Leti, Roma e lo Stato Pontificio, 20.

27. Stock, Consular Relations, 356–7.

28. Keiger, Italy, 362–3.

29. D'Ideville, Rome and her Captors, 157–8.

30. Commissione per la pubblicazione dei documenti diplomatici, I documenti diplomatici, 41.

31. Brignoli, “La liberazione di Roma,” 10; Castagnola, Da Firenze a Roma, 56–7.

32. Cadorna, Liberazione di Roma, 246–8; Castagnola, Da Firenze a Roma, 68. Gallon remarks on the result of that censorship: every newspaper adhered to ‘the rigid and puritan nineteenth-century morality’ in which only one paper thought it was excessive to cover up the copy of Titian's Venus displayed in a shop window. Gallon, “La stampa romana,” 66.

33. Pavone, “Alcuni aspetti,” 336–7; Perodi, Roma italiana, 52. On the oversimplification of a traditional gender dichotomy, see Riall, “Eroe maschili” and Guidi, “Patriottismo femminile”; on plebiscites, see Fruci, “Il sacramento dell'unità nazionale.”

34. d'Ideville, Rome and her Captors, 167–8.

35. Caracciolo, Roma capitale, 99–101.

36. Caracciolo, Roma capitale, 52, 65, 250.

37. Scacchi, “Il movimento operaio a Roma,” 57.

38. Caracciolo, Roma capitale, 48; Scacchi, “Il movimento operaio,” 59; Salvatori, “Associazionismo e lotte operaie,” 242. At the same time, though, many more workers were not counted in censuses, especially women working at home; see Patriarca, Numbers and Nationhood on the manipulation of statistics on working women to enhance the ‘modernity’ of the new Italy.

39. Bartoccini, Roma nell'Ottocento, 552.

40. Chabod, Italian Foreign Policy, 52; Caracciolo, Roma capitale, 82–3; also Gallon, “La stampa romana,” 61ff.

41. Caracciolo, Roma capitale, 80 ff.

42. Martina, “Roma dal 20 settembre 1870,” 1067.

43. Martina, “Osservazioni sugli ‘stati delle anime’,” 22–3; Keiger, Italy, 471. On popular Catholicism differing from official dogma, see Carroll, Madonnas That Maim and Broers, The Politics of Religion in Napoleonic Italy, ch. 5.

44. 11 June 1871. La Libertà had merged with the Gazzetta del Popolo, so its full title was now La Libertà, Gazzetta del Popolo; its sympathies, reflected in its title, lay with the new order, making it all the more likely to report an episode making the Church look foolish and/or unpopular.

45. Archivio di Stato di Roma (ASR), Tribunale Criminale di Roma, b.2754, n.264; Questura, b.1 f.9, Dec. 8 and Dec. 11 1870; Luogotenenza Generale (Luog. Gen.) b.48, f.15, Dec. 9 1870; Roma, 10 Dec. 1870; Libertà, Gazzetta del Popolo, 6 Jan. 1871. There were similar clashes in August 1871; see Pref. Gab. b.12, f.479.

46. ASR, Pref. Gab. b.2, f.75, Feb. 5 1871; b.12, f.432, 16 May 1871; b.12, f.479, May–June 1871; b.19, f.698, 13 Feb. 1871; Luog. Gen. b.36, f.32, Dec. 6 1870; b.34. It was of course in local officials’ interest to claim these events were due to bribery rather than genuine clerical sympathies on the part of the local population; but it appears any exaggerations were likely to be caught and looked into higher up; for instance, Pref. Gab. b.12, f.432 and Luog. Gen. b.36, f.31 (6 Dec. 1870). The province consisted of the five provinces of the old papal state. During the 1860s, the mountainous zones in particular had become a retreat for brigands, deserters and criminals on the run from the Italian state; after 20 September, they were joined by ex-pontifical militia. Agriculture in this region had undergone none of the modernisation visible elsewhere in Europe; in an 1872 report on the agricultural and commercial situation, the US Consulate General for Italy wrote that ‘an ordinary laborer receives 10 cents a day, a half bottle of wine and a small loaf of bread’ and used ‘agricultural implements which are the same as those used by their ancestors two thousand years ago’ to work a ‘barren and uncultivated waste’. Much labour was done by braccianti, day-labourers recruited from the central Apennines. This rural proletariat would become a distinctive element in Italian labour history, but did not begin to organise until the 1880s (though elsewhere they engaged in proto-strikes as early as the 1840s). Rossi, “Le condizioni della campagna romana,” 176. For reports on the public spirit in rural communities, see ASR, Pref. Gab., b.5, f.170, 18 March 1871.

47. ASR, Pref. Gab. b.12, f.479, May–Aug. 1871.

48. Stock, Consular Relations, 354–5.

49. ASR, Pref. Gab. b.2, f.68, Feb. 7 1871.

50. ASR, Luog. Gen., b.39, Jan. 4 1871.

51. ASR, Luog. Gen., b.36, f.31, Nov. 5 1870.

52. ASR, Questura, b.8, f.36, March 27 1871.

53. ASR, Luog. Gen. b. 1, Oct. 4 1870; Pref. Gab., b. 25, f.1012, Apr 1 1872; Pref. Gab. b. 10, f.59, July 28 1874.

54. Briguglio, “La vita politica e sociale a Venezia,” 19–20; Camurri, Censimento storico.

55. Manacorda, Il movimento operaio italiano, 65.

56. Rosselli, Mazzini e Bakunin; Montale, Mazzini e le origini del movimento operaio; Scirocco, “L'associazione mazziniano.”

57. Manacorda, “Lo spettro del comunismo,” 77.

58. Gazzetta del Popolo, 30 September 1870. On mutual aid societies in the province, see ASR, Pref. Gab. b.16, f.601

59. Scacchi et al., Operai tipografi a Roma, 27, 57.

60. Scacchi, “Movimento operaio,” 63–4; ASR, Luog. Gen., b.37, 15 Nov. 1870; ASR, Pref. Gab. b.16, f.607, 17 Nov. 1871. A year later, the Questura reported that the societies that had formed in Rome ‘lack that compactness and that solid organisation for which the same societies are prized and useful in northern Italy’. ASR, Pref. Gab. b.16, f.601, 2 Oct. 1871.

61. Archivio Centrale dello Stato (ACS), Congresso Operaio, B.5, f.12.

62. Mazzini's own newspaper Roma del Popolo acknowledged the absence of many representatives, though it argued that some of those absences were justified because people wanted to take part in the commemorations of the 1867 Garibaldian battle at Mentana (4 Nov. 1871). But the Prefettura fleshed out this account by noting a meeting of two hundred Roman workers the preceding evening, in which a heated argument over Mazzinian principles took place (Pref. Gab. b. 16, f.642, 4 Nov. 1871). In reporting that ideological differences had flared up into personal insults outside the meeting hall, the police mentioned that at least one participant had challenged another to a duel. As duelling was associated with the upper ranks of society, this further reinforces the image of the elite nature of representation at the congress. ASR, Pref. Gab. b.16, f.607, 23 Nov. 1871.

63. Rosselli, Mazzini e Bakunin, 316

64. Montale, Mazzini, 106. On references to petroleum, see Pref. Gab. b.16. On the Internationalists' initial lack of success, see for instance ASR, Pref. Gab. b.16, f.607, 9 Sept. 1871, 23 Nov. 1871; in the latter, the Questura remarked that ‘real workers’ were still largely unaware of the existence of a Società Internazionale. Given the widespread influence of Bakunin in Italy, those identified by the police as Internationalists were probably early anarchists; police frequently interchanged Mazzinians, anarchists and Internationalists, or lumped them into the same general category, though they were more likely to compete against one another for workers' loyalties.

65. ACS, Congresso Operaio, b.5, f.12, 30 Oct. and 21 Oct. 1871.

66. ASR, Luog. Gen. b.35, f.19, 25 Oct., 29 Oct., 8 Nov. 1870; Gazzetta del Popolo, 30 Nov. 1870.

67. ASR, Luog. Gen. b.35, 7 Nov. 1870.

68. ASR, Luog. Gen. b.37, 28 Nov. 1870.

69. ASR, Luog. Gen. b.2, 15 Dec. 1871 and following.

70. Domenico Rizzo has shown that the immediate post-annexation period was also the beginning of a more sustained police presence designed to ‘clean up’ the manners of the new capital, precipitating increasing numbers of minor clashes with the police; “Liberal Decorum and Men.”

71. ASR, Questura, b.8, f.36, 24 Aug. 1871, 27 Aug 1871; Pref. Gab. b.11, f.408, 30 April 1871; in his memoirs of his long-running career in the police, Giuseppe Manfroni showed how aware the police officials themselves were of the issue. Sulla soglia del Vaticano.

72. ASR, Questura, b.6, f.27, 18 Nov. 1871.

73. A number of chroniclers who wrote 25-year retrospectives in the 1890s were alert to this; see for instance Borretti, “Venticinque anni” and Perodi, Roma italiana.

74. Manfroni, Sulla soglia del Vaticano, 64; ASR, Pref. Gab. b.11, f.408, 30 April 1871; La Libertà, Gazzetta del Popolo, 1 May 1871. Memories of 1867 were even more difficult to negotiate. Like 1848, it could serve as a helpful myth to link popular demand, nationalism and 1870; on the other hand, it was always risky to laud the practice of rebellion against the established government, lest people repeat it. But popular interest in 1867 did not run deep anyway. In October 1870, about 200 ‘of the working class’ gathered at the Ajani wool works in Trastevere, where papal troops had killed several people in 1867. The following year, though, Signor Ajani was unable to rally any interest in repeating the commemoration, which ‘passed almost unnoticed by the very popolani of Trastevere’. ASR, Miscellanei Rapporti Politici, 25 Oct and 27 Oct. 1870; Pref. Gab. b.19, f.684, 26 Oct. 1871. November gatherings to commemorate the battle at Mentana similarly fell off; a vast crowd of 2000 gathered on Nov. 3, but ‘an extremely small number’ returned as requested the following day. Luog. Gen. b.2, 3 Nov. 1870 and 4 Nov. 1870.

75. This is true not only of what might be called macro-leaders like Garibaldi, but on the local level as well. Coccapellier, mentioned earlier as an example of the overlap between different types of opposition, could gather 200 ‘of the lowest class’ to select representatives for the plebiscite in October 1870, but they did not vote for him as he had anticipated.ASR, Luog. Gen., b.1, 4 Oct. 1870. On Ciceruacchio, see Nussdorfer, “Popular Mobilization in Rome.”