Mazzini
Giuseppe Giovanni Maria Mazzini
Nickname/Alias: Giuseppe Joseph Mazzini; The Beating Heart of Italy
Achievements: Promoter of Italian unity
Born: June 22, 1805; Genoa, Italy.
Died: March 10, 1872; Pisa, Italy (Aged 66)
Field & Discipline: Government & Politics; Propagandist; Revolutionary
Language: Italian
Father: Giacomo Mazzini
Mother: Maria Drago (m. 1794)
Siblings: Rosa; Antonietta; Francesca
Spouse: None
Children: Joseph Demosthene Adolphe Aristide (illegitimate by Giuditta Sidoli)
Education: Private tutors (1810-19); University of Genoa (1819)
Life & Times:
In 1829 Mazzini enlisted as a “carbonaro,” a member of a secret society fighting the occupying Austrians for Italian independence.
Not long after, he was betrayed to the police, arrested and tried by the Piedmontese government, which had the reputation of being the most tyrannical administration in Italy. In the absence of proof they were obliged to release him, but he was ordered either to leave Piedmont or to live in isolation in a small town.
In March 1831, Mazzini moved to Marseilles, where he and other Italian exiles set up an organization called Young Italy. The aims of the group were to instill patriotism in young Italians, to liberate the separate Italian states, at the time under foreign rule, and to create a united, independent, Republic. The movement became popular, with a membership of around sixty thousand within a couple of years. To help spread his revolutionary ideas, Mazzini published a journal: “Young Italy.”
Mazzini and “Young Italy” became involved in attempted insurrections, all of which failed. The Papal authorities, in cooperation with [outlawed by] Metternich*, the chief minister of Austria, declared membership of “Young Italy” to be treasonable and punishable by death. Mazzini, now one of Europe's most wanted men, was tried and found guilty in his absence.
Expelled by the French, he set up new headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, in July 1833 and tried to organize a revolution in Savoy, which was part of the kingdom of Piedmont. At the same time, he tried encourage mutiny in the Piedmontese navy. The young [a follower was] Garibaldi*, fired by the revolutionary views of “Young Italy,” enrolled in the fleet in order to help organize the mutiny.
The plot failed and Garibaldi, escaped abroad. In 1834 Mazzini tried to recruit a thousand volunteers to invade Savoy, but again his plot was uncovered and the plan was abandoned. In June 1837, responding to foreign pressure, the Swiss ordered Mazzini to leave and, after fighting the order for a few months, he went to England at the end of the year.
Mazzini lived in modest lodgings in London while studying at the British Museum, where he met fellow Italian exile, [fellow-exile was] Panizzi*. To earn money Mazzini wrote for “Le Monde” and, through the influence of [helped by] John Stuart Mill*, also wrote for the “Westminster Review.”
The British started (illegally) to intercept his mail and when Mazzini proved this was happening, the row publicized the cause of Italian patriotism and gained him the support of [helped by] Robert Browning*, [helped by] Dickens* and many others.
In 1847, he wrote an open letter to the new Pope, Pius IX, urging him to unify Italy, but received no response. In 1848, the year of many European revolutions, Mazzini returned to Italy, hearing that the Austrians had been driven out of Milan and that Piedmont was at war with them.
He was welcomed as a revolutionary leader in Milan, but soon lost favor when he made it clear that the union of Lombardy with Piedmont, as proposed by the Milanese provisional government, was wrong for the future of Italy. When the Piedmontese armies withdrew and the Austrians re-entered Milan, he served briefly with an irregular force under Garibaldi, before escaping to Switzerland.
The following year, Mazzini returned to Rome, where a revolution had driven out the Pope and a Republic had been proclaimed. He became the effective head of the new Republic, which was to have a brief life. The Pope appealed to Catholic countries for help and a French army landed in Italy, crushing the Republic and causing Mazzini to flee once again to Switzerland, in July 1849.
Six months later he returned to London where he founded another society, the “Friends of Italy” and became involved in new revolutionary activities. In 1853 he backed the Milanese workers in another unsuccessful rising against the Austrians and, in 1853 and 1854, he sent Felice Orsini on two missions to begin a revolt in Carrara.
In 1856, he went secretly to Genoa to plan a number of simultaneous insurrections, all of which, like all of his plots, were unsuccessful. Mazzini became unpopular in Piedmont, where the new moderate party, headed by the aristocratic [opposed by] Cavour* as Prime Minister, was working for orderly progress without revolution.
Mazzini was also excluded from the “party of action” sponsoring Garibaldi's expedition to liberate Sicily in 1860, even though the expedition was based on an original plan of Mazzini's .
Mazzini went to Naples during Garibaldi's brief dictatorship of southern Italy, but was back in London when the newly united Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed in 1861. To his disappointment, Italy, although united, still remained a Monarchy, not the Republic Mazzini had so desperately wanted.
During 1871, he went back to Rome, where he edited the anti-Socialist “Roma del Popolo.” He then moved to Pisa in March 1871, where he started planning an Italian workingmen's congress.
Not long after, in March 1872, he died from pleurisy in Pisa.
Extra Connections: Also met: [met] Hugo*, [met] Kossuth*, [met] Alcott*, Carlyle*, [met] Sand*, [met] Giuseppe Verdi*, [met] Nietzsche* and [met] Smiles*
[a fan was] Bryant* was an admirer
He negotiated with [negotiated with] De Lesseps*
Swinburne*?
Assessment: By persuading the Piedmontese to work for the national cause, he played an indispensable part in the making of modern Italy.
Oneliner: Giuseppe Mazzini, promoter of Italian unification
- Bibliography:
Sarti, Roland, “Mazzini: A Life for the Religion of Politics,” Westport, Conn. & London: Praeger, 1997.
- Smith, Denis Mack, “Mazzini” New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1994.