Da liberali a criminali. I patrioti del Risorgimento meridionale

The essay reconstructs the representation of liberal-democratic patriots in the context of the securitization policies of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, fitting into the recent field of security history studies. It focuses in particular on the construction of the threat to security represented by liberal revolutionaries in the way in which it was elaborated in police practices, namely through a process of criminalization and de-legitimation of the political enemy. The intersection of registers of suspects, political biographies, and secret agent reports reveals the tendency to lump together the profiles of liberal patriots with those of common criminals and, consequently, state security issues with issues of collective security. The essay also highlights how the various subjects in charge of the political control of the Kingdom – from the central and peripheral authorities of the High Police to the consuls and secret agents abroad – used, in interventions related to political communication as well as administrative documents, a politically and ideologically marked language, which both shared and contributed to shape style and topics of the wider reactionary public discourse of the time.

Keywords: Security history; High police; Kingdom of the Two Sicilies; Political crime; Reactionary image