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REGION AND NATION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2016

Martin Thom
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Extract

Carl Levy (ed.), Italian Regionalism. History, Identity and Politics, Berg, Oxford 1996, 197 pp., ISBN 1–85975–131–7 hbk, 1–85973–156–2 pbk, £12.95.

It would seem to be self-evident that we cannot say what regions (and regionalism) are until we have said what nations (and nationalism) are, for the concept of region was formulated in response to, and to some degree in opposition to, that of nation. It would be overstating the case, even in the France of the Restoration or of the July Monarchy, to define ‘regionalism’ as belonging on the Right of the political spectrum, for there are liberal counter-examples to pit against de Gobineau, and yet many did indeed construe regional identity as a threat to the principle of nationality. Thus, in the Italian context, as David Hine observes in the volume under review, the real explanation for the limited nature of the challenge to the highly centralized state ‘probably lies, at least for the period from 1860 to 1922, in the cultural dominance of the myth of national popular resurgence on which the Risorgimento was based’ (p. 110). On this reading, critics of unity, who were often advocates of diversity also, were bound to remain unheeded.

Type
REVIEW ARTICLES
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 2 , August 1997 , pp. 81 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

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