No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Commentary: Between Invention and Imagination—Nationalism, National Identity, Trieste, and the International Context
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 March 2009
Extract
This is a story of a missed opportunity. Italian national identity emerged in the modern era on a feeble institutional basis. However, the completion of the country's unity with World War I offered the Italian Liberal state and its administrative elites a great chance. Italy's leaders and officials made the most conspicuous attempt to assert their function as genuine public servants of the general interest—the most effective way to corroborate a sense of national community from the top—by mastering the fervent irredentism in the Venezia Giulia with a mixture of encouragement and moderation. And yet, after four years, this enlightened conduct had to yield to the fanatic and counterproductive nationalism of the far right. Maura Hametz provides a perceptive explanation of this missed opportunity by focusing on the interplay between national choices and local politics in Trieste. Even better, Hametz's essay narrates the story at the microlevel with frequent reference to the international context, thus using a rare combination of ethnocultural and diplomatic history approaches. Few studies of national identity dare encroach on traditional diplomatic history territory. But when dealing with the border disputes among Austria's successor states, it becomes crucial to fit the anthropological and sociological aspects of microhistory into the general history of Europe's balance of power.
- Type
- Forum What's in a Name? Anointing the Nation-State
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 2004
References
1 On the strong individualism in Italian culture, see especially Loggia, Ernesto Galli della, L'identità italiana (Bologna, 1998), 87ffGoogle Scholar; and Bollati, Giulio, L'italiano. Il carattere nazionale come storia e come invenzione (Turin, 1983).Google Scholar
2 Loggia, Galli della, L'identità italiana, 99–103.Google Scholar
3 Rome, Archivio Storico del Ministero degli Affari Esteri (hereafter ASMAE), Ambasciata Londra, box 492, tel. 7418 Sforza, to Imperiali, , 20 07 1920Google Scholar; Memorandum della Marina sugli incidenti di Spalato, 26 07 1920Google Scholar; and Rusinow, Dennison, Italy's Austrian Heritage (Oxford, 1969), 116.Google Scholar
4 Quoted in Ara, Angelo, “The ‘Cultural Soul’ and the ‘Merchant Soul’: Trieste between Italian and Austrian Identity,” in The Habsburg Legacy: National Identity in Historical Perspective, ed. Robertson, Ritchie and Timms, Edward (Edinburgh, 1994), 62Google Scholar; this essay also addresses the issue of Austrian and Italian legacies in Trieste, passim.
5 The best account of this distinction between nationalisms is Gentile, Emilio, La Grande Italia: Ascesa e declino del mito della nazione nel ventesimo secolo (Milan, 1997), 117–29Google Scholar; see also Aliberti, Giovanni, “Nazione e stato nei federalisti cattolici del Risorgimento: Balbo, Taparelli, D'Ondes Reggio,” Ricerche di Storia sociale e religiosa 45 (1994).Google Scholar
6 See in particular Gentile, , La Grande Italia, 129–40Google Scholar; Formigoni, Guido, L'Italia dei cattolici: Fede e nazione dal Risorgimento alla Repubblica (Bologna, 1998), 77–98Google Scholar; and Gemelli, Agostino, Principio di Nazionalità e amor di Patria nella dottrina cattolica (Turin, 1918)Google Scholar. See also Loggia, Galli della, L'identità italiana, 109, 158Google Scholar, on the failure of Italian political parties to help mold a national identity.
7 ASMAE, Ambasciata Parigi, box 39, folder 5, Sforza, to Giolitti, , 17 08 1920.Google Scholar
8 For more on this phase of Italian diplomacy, see Brogi, Alessandro, “Il trattato di Rapallo del 1920 e la politica danubiano-balcanica di Carlo Sforza,” Storia delle relazioni internazionali 5, no. 1 (1989): 3–46Google Scholar; Melchionni, Maria Grazia, “La convenzione antiasburgica del 12 novembre 1920,” Storia e Politica 11, no. 2 (1972): 224–64Google Scholar; Giordano, Giancarlo, Carlo Sforza: la diplomazia, 1896–1921 (Milan, 1987)Google Scholar; Haas, Hans, “Le relazioni italo-austriache dall'armistizio di Villa Giusti al trattato di Saint-Germain,” Storia e Politica 12, no. 3 (1973): 411–28Google Scholar; Albrecht-Carrié, René, Italy at the Paris Peace Conference, rev. ed. (New York, 1966)Google Scholar; and Burgwyn, H. James, The Legend of the Mutilated Victory: Italy, The Great War, and the Paris Peace Conference, 1915–1919 (Westport, 1993).Google Scholar
9 See ASMAE, Affari Politici Cecoslovacchia, box 933, folder 1846, tel. Biancheri, to Scialoja, , 3 02 1920Google Scholar; and tel. 233 Torretta, Della to Scialoja, , 14 03 1920Google Scholar. See also Rome, Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Carte Sforza, box 10, folder 3, tel. 449 Cerruti, to Sforza, , 13 09 1920Google Scholar; and Document 617, Gyorgyey, to Teleki, , 27 08 1920Google Scholar, in Deák, Francis and Ujváry, Deszo, eds., Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of Hungary, vol. 1, February 1919-December 1920 (Budapest, 1938).Google Scholar
10 Loggia, Galli della, L'identità italiana, 149.Google Scholar
11 That is also how Benedict Anderson stresses the distinction between his thesis and that of Ernest Gellner. See Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London, 1991), 6Google Scholar; and Gellner, Ernest, Thought and Change (London, 1964), 169.Google Scholar