Radicali, sparlatori e aspettative popolari nella rivoluzione costituzionale napoletana del 1848

Autore: Luca Di Mauro
In: Meridiana. 95, 2019
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Abstract

The article is a review of Viviana Mellone’s book Napoli 1848, il movimento radicale e la rivoluzione, published by Franco Angeli in 2017. It aims at underlining the importance of the Neapolitan experience among the Europeans revolutions of 1848, while the traditional historiography describes it as an experience of minor importance in comparison with the ones in Paris, Vienna or Milan. To do so, Viviana Mellone analyses, on one hand, a group of «radical liberals» from Calabria deploying their political activity in the capital of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies; on the other, she considers the city of Naples as a physical and political space that participates as a protagonist in the constitutional experience. As far as the methodology is concerned, the author uses the concept of pre-political to take into account not only the projects and laws directly discussed in 1848 debate, but also the wider world of popular expectations. Viviana Mellone’s book manages to throw light on the Mediterranean contribution to the political ideas of 1848, and to clarify that a comparison between Naples and other European capitals is not only possible, but also necessary to understand the complexity of the phenomenon.

Keywords: Radicalism; 1848 constitutions; Risorgimento; Kingdom of the Two Sicilies; Liberalism