America in Italy : the United States in the political thought and imagination of the Risorgimento, 1763-1865

America in Italy examines the influence of the American political experience on the imagination of Italian political thinkers between the late eighteenth century and the unification of Italy in the 1860s. Axel Körner shows how Italian political thought was shaped by debates about the American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution, but he focuses on the important distinction that while European interest in developments across the Atlantic was keen, this attention was not blind admiration. Rather, America became a sounding board for the critical assessment of societal changes at home.

Many Italians did not think the United States had lessons to teach them and often concluded that life across the Atlantic was not just different but in many respects also objectionable. In America, utopia and dystopia seemed to live side by side, and Italian references to the United States were frequently in support of progressive or reactionary causes. Political thinkers including Cesare Balbo, Carlo Cattaneo, Giuseppe Mazzini, and Antonio Rosmini used the United States to shed light on the course of their nation's political resurgence. Concepts from Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Vico served to evaluate what Italians discovered about America. Ideas about American "domestic manners" were reflected and conveyed through works of ballet, literature, opera, and satire.

Transcending boundaries between intellectual and cultural history, America in Italy is the first book-length examination of the influence of America's political formation on modern Italian political thought.

• Preface p. xi
• A Note on References and Bibliography p. xvii
• Introduction p. 1
• A White Canvas p. 1
• Where, When, and What Was America? p. 7
• European Exchanges p. 9
• Transatlantic Connections p. 13
• America's Place on the Risorgimento's Map p. 16
• Literary Tropes p. 25
• Explaining America p. 31
• Pamphlets, Not Muskets p. 37
• Singing and Dancing America p. 40
• Chapter 1 America as History p. 42
• Fratricide and Civil War p. 42
• Histories and the Politics of Reception: Carlo Botta p. 46
• History, Literature, and the "Erotics of Art" p. 56
• Botta's Federalism of Nation-States p. 59
• Transatlantic Botta p. 60
• Carlo Giuseppe Londonio and the American Revolution p. 62
• America and Universal History: Giuseppe Compagnoni p. 66
• Historiography as Political Thought p. 73
• Chapter 2 Concepts in the Language of Politics p. 78
• Political Ideas and National Character p. 78
• Natural Rights and Constitutional Government p. 80
• Luigi Angeloni and Jacobin Americanism p. 85
• Representation in Transnational Perspective: Romagnosi and Balbo p. 87
• Democratic Challenges and the Limits of Italian Anglophilia p. 93
• Federalism p. 97
• Gioberti's Federalism, or "Britain, the Sicily of Europe" p. 100
• Rosmini and the Limits of American Democracy p. 103
• Mazzini's Challenge: Democracy beyond the American Way p. 108
• Democratic Diversions from Mazzini p. 112
• Chapter 3 A Model Republic? The United States in the Italian Revolutions of 1848 p. 114
• An Age of Constitutions: From 1820 to 1848 p. 114
• Carlo Cattaneo and the Revolution in Lombardy p. 121
• Cattaneo's Understanding of American Democracy p. 130
• Giuseppe Montanelli and Federal Democracy in Tuscany p. 138
• Independence and Constitutional Models in Sicily p. 146
• From Defeat to Annexation p. 160
• Chapter 4 Unveiling Modernity: Verdi's America and the Unification of Italy p. 163
• Murder in Boston, Parma, and Paris p. 163
• Un ballo and the Unification of Italy p. 167
• Staging the New World p. 169
• Un hallo, from Rome to the World p. 172
• Reading Un ballo in maschera p. 175
• Verdi's America p. 177
• Turning Gustavo into Riccardo p. 185
• Virgil in America p. 191
• Verdi and "il suo tempo" p. 193
• Lincoln's Un ballo p. 195
• Chapter 5 A War for Uncle Tom: Slavery and the American Civil War in Italy p. 199
• "Of the Foul Blood of Negroes" p. 199
• Slavery in Italian Political Thought p. 200
• Slavery on Stage p. 206
• Reading Uncle Tom p. 210
• Italian Unification and the American Civil War p. 215
• From Subject Nation to International Arbitrator p. 221
• Conclusions p. 225
• Notes p. 233
• Bibliography p. 293
• Index p. 333