: History

Italy was born that way

During this round of conversations the historian Gianni Oliva offers a synthesis of the vicissitudes of the house of Savoy, and with simple and clear words he explains how started in the eight hundred, from the Piedmont of Vittorio Emanuele II and Cavour, that process of the Risorgimento which led to the political unification of Italy, as a unique State (the more challenging concept of nation is another concern). The great aim, as Oliva argues and explains, could be achieved thanks to the drive of a unique and decisive joining factor, that is House of Savoy.

On a cultural and communicative level, being able to give a complete and objective reconstruction of the birth of Italy is a significant, if not unique event. Media usually don’t take into consideration (or do that unwillingly) the period of Risorgimento. In fact, does anybody remember a fiction about Cavour?

The cause is to be searched within the same troubles that delayed our political union, with partisanships and prejudices; this ancient factiousness couldn’t not echo into the very quest for shared origins. The Risorgimento, though it had somewhat libertarian and radical-democratic components, was above all a bourgeois and liberal-moderated occurrence, furthermore it was inspired and guided by a monarchical strategy. Oliva (a historian of an openly reformist political and cultural extraction), claims that openly and clearly. He eventually breaches that officious division of topics and restricted areas, that led from time to time to idealizing – or underestimating – due to particular remarks this and that page of a significant, despite brief, national event.

Another step, not a small one, towards a sample of a “Normal Country”. Whereas, if the Resistance belongs to all Italians, the Risorgimento should do the same: starting, of course, from real events and not from edifying pictorial representations.