Giuseppe Mazzini
Giuseppe Mazzini was an Italian politician, journalist, and activist for the unification of Italy and spearhead of the Italian revolutionary movement. His efforts helped bring about the independent and unified Italy in place of the several separate states, many dominated by foreign powers, that existed until the 19th century. An Italian nationalist in the historical radical tradition and a proponent of a republicanism of social-democratic inspiration, Mazzini "helped define the European movement for popular democracy in a republican state."
Mazzini's thoughts influenced the Italian and European republican movements, the Constitution of Italy, and Europeanism, as well as politicians of a later period, including Fascist Dictator Benito Mussolini, American president Woodrow Wilson, British prime minister David Lloyd George, Indian independence movement figures Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru,Creator of Hindutva idoelogy Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and Former President of China Sun Yat-sen.
Biography
Early years
Mazzini was born in Genoa, which had recently been annexed by the First French Empire. His father Giacomo Mazzini, originally from Chiavari, was a university professor who had adhered to Jacobin ideology, while his mother Maria Drago was renowned for her beauty and religious Jansenist fervour. From a very early age, Mazzini showed good learning qualities as well as a precocious interest in politics and literature. He was admitted to university at the age of 14, graduating in law in 1826 and initially practised as a "poor man's lawyer". Mazzini also hoped to become a historical novelist or a dramatist and in the same year wrote his first essay, Dell'amor patrio di Dante, published in 1827, and inspired by feelings of Romanticism. In 1828–1829, he collaborated with the Genoese newspaper L'Indicatore Genovese which was soon closed by the Piedmontese authorities. He then became one of the leading authors of L'Indicatore Livornese, published at Livorno by Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi, until this paper was closed down by the authorities.An admirer of Foscolo and Byron, he was part of a circle of Romantic writers, participating in the debate of the time against the classicists.
In 1827, Mazzini travelled to Tuscany, where he became a member of the Carbonari, a secret association with political purposes. On 31 October 1830, he was arrested at Genoa and interned at Savona. In early 1831, he was released from prison, but confined to a small hamlet. He chose exile instead, moving to Geneva, Switzerland.
Failed insurrections
In 1831, Mazzini went to Marseille, where he became a popular figure among the Italian exiles. He was a frequent visitor to the apartment of Giuditta Bellerio Sidoli, a Modenese widow who became his lover. In August 1832 Giuditta Sidoli gave birth to a boy, almost certainly Mazzini's son, whom she named Joseph Démosthène Adolpe Aristide after members of the family of Démosthène Ollivier, with whom Mazzini was staying. The Olliviers took care of the child in June 1833 when Giuditta and Mazzini left for Switzerland. The child died in February 1835.Mazzini organized a new political society called Young Italy. It was a secret society formed to promote Italian unification: "One, free, independent, republican nation." Mazzini believed that a popular uprising would create a unified Italy, and would touch off a European-wide revolutionary movement. The group's motto was God and the People, and its basic principle was the unification of the several states and kingdoms of the peninsula into a single republic as the only true foundation of Italian liberty. The new nation had to be "One, Independent, Free Republic".
Mazzini's political activism met some success in Tuscany, Abruzzi, Sicily, Piedmont, and his native Liguria, especially among several military officers. Young Italy counted about 60,000 adherents in 1833, with branches in Genoa and other cities. In that year Mazzini first attempted insurrection, which would spread from Chambéry, Alessandria, Turin, and Genoa. However, the Savoy government discovered the plot before it could begin and many revolutionaries were arrested. The repression was ruthless: 12 participants were executed, while Mazzini's best friend and director of the Genoese section of the Giovine Italia, Jacopo Ruffini, killed himself. Mazzini was tried in absentia and sentenced to death.
Despite this setback, whose victims later created numerous doubts and psychological strife in Mazzini, he organized another uprising for the following year. A group of Italian exiles were to enter Piedmont from Switzerland and spread the revolution there, while Giuseppe Garibaldi, who had recently joined Young Italy, was to do the same from Genoa. However, the Piedmontese troops easily crushed the new attempt. Denis Mack Smith writes:
In the spring of 1834, while at Bern, Mazzini and a dozen refugees from Italy, Poland, and Germany founded a new association with the grandiose name of Young Europe. Its basic, and equally grandiose idea, was that, as the French Revolution of 1789 had enlarged the concept of individual liberty, another revolution would now be needed for national liberty, and his vision went further because he hoped that in the no doubt distant future free nations might combine to form a loosely federal Europe with some kind of federal assembly to regulate their common interests.... His intention was nothing less than to overturn the European settlement agreed in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna, which had reestablished an oppressive hegemony of a few great powers and blocked the emergence of smaller nations.... Mazzini hoped, but without much confidence, that his vision of a league or society of independent nations would be realized in his own lifetime. In practice, Young Europe lacked the money and popular support for more than a short-term existence. Nevertheless, he always remained faithful to the ideal of a united continent for which the creation of individual nations would be an indispensable preliminary.
On 28 May 1834, Mazzini was arrested at Solothurn, and exiled from Switzerland. He moved to Paris, where he was again imprisoned on 5 July. He was released only after promising he would move to England. Mazzini, together with a few Italian friends, moved in January 1837 to live in London in very poor economic conditions.
Exile in London
On 30 April 1840, Mazzini reformed the Giovine Italia in London, and on 10 November of the same year, he began issuing the Apostolato popolare.A succession of failed attempts at promoting further uprisings in Sicily, Abruzzi, Tuscany, and Lombardy-Venetia discouraged Mazzini for a long period, which dragged on until 1840. He was also abandoned by Sidoli, who had returned to Italy to rejoin her children. The help of his mother pushed Mazzini to create several organizations aimed at the unification or liberation of other nations, in the wake of Giovine Italia: "Young Germany", "Young Poland", and "Young Switzerland", which were under the aegis of "Young Europe". He also created an Italian school for poor people active from 10 November 1841 at 5 Greville Street, London. From London he also wrote an endless series of letters to his agents in Europe and South America and made friends with Thomas Carlyle and his wife Jane. The "Young Europe" movement also inspired a group of young Turkish army cadets and students who, later in history, named themselves the "Young Turks".
In 1843, he organized another riot in Bologna, which attracted the attention of two young officers of the Austrian Navy, Attilio and Emilio Bandiera. With Mazzini's support, they landed near Cosenza but were arrested and executed. Mazzini accused the British government of having passed information about the expeditions to the Neapolitans, and the question was raised in the British Parliament. When it was admitted that his private letters had indeed been opened, and its contents revealed by the Foreign Office to the Austrian and Neapolitan governments, Mazzini gained popularity and support among the British liberals, who were outraged by such a blatant intrusion of the government into his private correspondence.
In 1847, he moved again to London, where he wrote a long "open letter" to Pope Pius IX, whose apparently liberal reforms had gained him a momentary status as a possible paladin of the unification of Italy, but The Pope did not reply. He also founded the People's International League. By 8 March 1848, Mazzini was in Paris, where he launched a new political association, the Associazione Nazionale Italiana. In apologising for not being able to attend the first annual celebration of the Leeds Redemption Society on 7 January 1847 he offered to become a subscriber.
1848–1849 revolts
On 7 April 1848, Mazzini reached Milan, whose population had rebelled against the Austrian garrison and established a provisional government. The First Italian War of Independence, started by the Piedmontese king Charles Albert to exploit the favourable circumstances in Milan, turned into a total failure. Mazzini, who had never been popular in the city because he wanted Lombardy to become a republic instead of joining Piedmont, abandoned Milan. He joined Garibaldi's irregular force at Bergamo, moving to Switzerland with him. Mazzini was one of the founders and leaders of the Action Party, the first organized party in the history of Italy.On 9 February 1849, a republic was declared in Rome, with Pius IX already having been forced to flee to Gaeta the preceding November. On the same day the Republic was declared, Mazzini reached the city. He was appointed, together with Carlo Armellini and Aurelio Saffi, as a member of the triumvirate of the new republic on 29 March, becoming soon the true leader of the government and showing good administrative capabilities in social reforms. However, the French troops called by the Pope made clear that the resistance of the Republican troops, led by Garibaldi, was in vain. On 12 July 1849, Mazzini set out for Marseille, from where he moved again to Switzerland.