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The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, Its Regions, and Their Peoples, by David Gilmour
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A provocative, entertaining account of Italy's diverse riches, its hopes and dreams, its past and present
Did Garibaldi do Italy a disservice when he helped its disparate parts achieve unity? Was the goal of political unification a mistake? The question is asked and answered in a number of ways in The Pursuit of Italy, an engaging, original consideration of the many histories that contribute to the brilliance―and weakness―of Italy today.
David Gilmour's wonderfully readable exploration of Italian life over the centuries is filled with provocative anecdotes as well as personal observations, and is peopled by the great figures of the Italian past―from Cicero and Virgil to the controversial politicians of the twentieth century. His wise account of the Risorgimento debunks the nationalistic myths that surround it, though he paints a sympathetic portrait of Giuseppe Verdi, a beloved hero of the era.
Gilmour shows that the glory of Italy has always lain in its regions, with their distinctive art, civic cultures, identities, and cuisines. Italy's inhabitants identified themselves not as Italians but as Tuscans and Venetians, Sicilians and Lombards, Neapolitans and Genoese. Italy's strength and culture still come from its regions rather than from its misconceived, mishandled notion of a unified nation.
- Sales Rank: #44503 in Books
- Published on: 2012-11-13
- Released on: 2012-11-13
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.27" h x 1.34" w x 5.48" l, .96 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 480 pages
Review
“Amazingly compendious . . . The best one-volume history of Italy now available . . . [The Pursuit of Italy] has the same tonic, exhilarating impact as the thigh-slapping overture to a Verdi opera.” ―Jonathan Keates, The Literary Review
“[The Pursuit of Italy has] a freshness and readability often lacking in more laborious histories, an attractiveness reinforced by the quality of the writing, which is versatile and vivid and frequently witty, able to encompass both densely factual material and complicated narrative without loss of clarity or elegance . . . Compelling to read and highly informative . . . Brilliantly accomplished.” ―Barry Unsworth, The Spectator
“Lucid and elegant, clever and provocative . . . Tracing Italy's history from Romulus and Remus to the misdemeanours of Silvio Berlusconi, Gilmour develops his thesis with wit, style, and a great deal of learning.” ―Dominic Sandbrook, The Sunday Times (London)
“[A] well-researched and engaging canter through the peninsula's history.” ―Peter Popham, The Independent
“[Gilmour is] a witty guide with an elegant prose style and a mind delightfully furnished with anecdotes and dictums, sensual impressions and conversations . . . [His] prose smells not of the archive but of a convivial meal eaten beneath a pergola in the Pisan hills.” ―Lucy Hughes-Hallett, The Daily Telegraph
“Gilmour's elegantly written book . . . is full of impressive insights . . . A stimulating, up-to-date and reliable guide to modern Italian history.” ―Tony Barber, Financial Times
“In this superb history of Italy and the Italian people, Gilmour celebrates a nation of bewilderingly mixed bloods and ethnicities . . . The Pursuit of Italy offers an enduring tribute to a various and wonderful people.” ―Ian Thomson, Evening Standard
About the Author
Sir David Gilmour is one of Britain's most admired and accomplished historical writers and biographers. His previous books include The Last Leopard, The Long Recessional (FSG, 2002), and, most recently, The Ruling Caste (FSG, 2006).
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Pursuit of Italy
1Diverse ItaliesFRACTURED GEOGRAPHYItaly, complained Napoleon, is too long. It is indeed very long, the longest country in Europe outside Scandinavia and the Ukraine. It is also one of the thinnest, its peninsula about as narrow as Portugal and the Netherlands, broader only than Albania and Luxembourg. Ugo La Malfa, a republican politician of the twentieth century, liked to picture the country as a man with his feet in Africa and his hands clutching the Alps, trying to pull himself up into the middle of Europe.1We think of Italy as a country with a north and a south, but actually its 720 miles run diagonally through different climatic and vegetation zones from the town of Aosta in the north-west, where French is an official language, to the Salentine Peninsula in the Apulian south-east, where Greek is still spoken. On the battlements of the Castle of Otranto you feel you are in the Balkans, and in a sense you are: you can see the mountains of Greece and Albania across the water; you are closer to Istanbul and the Ukraine than you are to Aosta; the Black Sea is nearer than the west coast of Sardinia. When Apulia joined the Kingdom of Italy in 1861, the new state's capital was Turin, a city so far away that Otranto is today closer to seventeen foreign capitals than it is to Turin. No wonder you sometimes hear Apulians refer to themselves as Greeks or Levantines. Sometimes they pretend that they are not also Italians.In 1847 the Austrian chancellor, Prince Metternich, dismissed Italy as 'une expression géographique', a remark that has subsequently succeeded in annoying many people, especially Italians and historians. At the time Italy may have been more than a geographical expression - thoughit was still divided into eight independent states - but Metternich was repeating a view widely held for more than 2,000 years: Italy, like Iberia, may have been a geographical unit with natural borders but it had not been united since Roman times and did not seem to require political unity now or in the future.Italy seems to begin with the myth of Hercules, the Greek hero who rescued a stray calf that had wandered across southern Italy and swum the Straits of Messina. The land the animal crossed duly became known as Italia, from the word ouitoulos or bull-calf, a word that has also bequeathed us, via Oscan and Latin, the word vitello or veal. A related theory, recorded by the Greek historian Timaeus, held that the ancient Greeks had been so impressed by the cattle in Italy that they had rewarded the land with the same name.This may be the explanation for the origin of the name 'Italia', but it does not seem quite convincing. For centuries northern visitors have been scathing about the skinny appearance of Italian cows, especially the small, white, wide-horned ones bred mainly for pulling carts and drawing ploughs. The arid south of the peninsula, bereft of pasture and hay fields, can hardly have seemed a herdsman's paradise even for the Greeks: the great Murge Plateau in Apulia cannot support cattle because it does not have streams. Italy today has to import more than half the milk it consumes and, if we associate the south with any kind of cattle now, it is with water buffaloes, producers of the milk used in making the soft white cheese mozzarella di bùfala. Yet the buffaloes are of Asian origin and were brought to Italy for ploughing in the early Middle Ages; later they went wild, roaming over Campania and the Pontine Marshes before they were domesticated once more in the eighteenth century. Used as draught animals rather than for milk and meat, the herds seemed to be dying out in the first half of the twentieth century. Their famous product did not become either famous or fashionable until the 1980s.In the fifth century BC the word 'Italia' applied only to the Calabrian toe of the Italian 'boot', which was inhabited by a people known as the Bruttians. Later it was extended to Lucania and Campania, and later still the term spread northwards to describe Rome's conquests in the peninsula. The Greek historians Herodotus and Thucydides did not regard the land beyond the River Po as a part of Italy, and indeedgeographically the Po Valley belongs to the continental land-mass not the peninsula. But after the Romans had subdued its Gallic tribes and reached the Alps, that area too was added to Italia. By the second century BC another Greek historian, Polybius, confirmed that almost the whole of modern Italy was then Italia, though Roman poets of a later age sometimes called it by other names such as Hesperia, Ausonia, Saturnia terra and (appropriately for what is now the largest wine producer in the world) Oenotria, 'the land of wine'.There was one sharp check to this progress. In 91 BC some of Rome's socii (subservient allies) rebelled and set up a state in the central Apennines called Italia, with a capital Corfinium (renamed Italica), administered by praetors, a senate and two consuls. The insurgents even produced coins showing the bull of Italia goring and about to rape the Roman wolf. They were defeated, however, in the ensuing Social War by Rome's traditional tactic of brutality plus concessions, and no further attempt was made to set up a state called Italy for many centuries to come.Within a century of the war, the earlier version of Italia was organized as an administrative unit by Augustus, the first Roman emperor, who divided it into eleven districts; the Istrian Peninsula, which was joined to Venetia, was the only part that does not belong to the modern state of Italy.a A later emperor, Diocletian, expanded Italia to include Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica and Raetia, a district that contained parts of what are now Switzerland, Bavaria and the Tyrol.Augustan Italy, lauded by Virgil and his fellow poets, remained an inspiration to the poets of the Middle Ages, to Petrarch who sang of 'the fair land / That the Apennines divide and the sea and the Alps surround',2 and to many others later on. Yet until the end of the eighteenth century Italy remained a literary idea, an abstract concept, an imaginary homeland or simply a sentimental urge. If at times people used it to express resentment at foreign occupation, its independence and unity were not political aspirations. And for a large majority of the population it meant nothing at all. Even in 1861, at the time of unification, some Sicilians thought L'Italia - or rather la Talia - was their new queen. A full century later, the social reformer Danilo Dolciencountered Sicilians who had never heard of Italy and asked him what it was.3
The geography we imbibe from school textbooks and atlases makes us think that Italy is peculiarly blessed in its position. According to the revolutionary patriot Giuseppe Mazzini, God had given Italians 'the most clearly demarcated fatherland in Europe'.4 There it lies in the centre of the Mediterranean, protected in the north by its Alpine ramparts and everywhere else by its seas.Italy is actually extremely unfortunate in its position, which has made it one of the most easily and frequently invaded places in the world. The Alps may look impressive but they have been penetrated without difficulty since the Bronze Age. In the twelfth century BC traders were bringing amber from the Baltic across the Alps to Etruria and Sardinia; by the Roman era seventeen of the twenty-three Alpine passes were being used. Few ramparts have been so consistently surmounted down the centuries. Hannibal brought his Carthaginian army over the Western Alps, while Alaric's Goths and Attila's Huns came from the east through the lower Julian and Carnic Alps. In 1796 General Bonaparte, as he then was, marched through the Maritime Alps between Nice and Genoa - allowing him to boast to his soldiers, 'Annibal a forcé les Alpes - nous, nous les avons tournés' - but four years later, now as first consul, he descended on Italy through five more northerly passes. Afterwards he had himself painted riding a white charger through the snows of the Great St Bernard, though in fact he had been led through them on a little grey mule.Many other aggressors have emulated these invaders of Italy. Once they had got through the passes and on to the plain, they could speed up across the Po Valley, which was flat, inviting and difficult to defend, unless they were attacking from the west, in which case they were hindered by tributaries of the Po flowing southwards in parallel from the northern lakes: Milan was simple to capture, and those other 'gateways' to Italy, Turin and Verona, were not much harder. One reason why the eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) lasted for a thousand years longer than its western counterpart was that it was much easier to defend. The Goths and Huns might rampage around the Balkans but they were halted at Constantinople by the city walls and a fleetthat prevented then from crossing the Bosphorus and ravaging Asia Minor. Later the Byzantines performed a similar feat in reverse, blocking the Arabs in the seventh century and thus preventing them from pouring into eastern Europe, reaching Italy and doubtless islamicizing Rome. At a time, a century before Charlemagne, when Europe was militarily weak, Byzantium saved it and made possible its later rise to dominance. Apart from the French Riviera, the Italian peninsula has the only Mediterranean coasts that (except around Bari) have never been Muslim.Its seas made Italy even more vulnerable than its mountains. With 4,500 miles of coastline, the peninsula and its islands are almost impossible to patrol. They can be attacked from all directions by predators from three continents.Boats were man's first means of transport, and by 5000 BC these had become sufficiently sturdy to undertake long sea voyages. In the fifth century BC Herodotus observed that a boat could sail 75 miles in twenty-four hours, a statistic suggesting that invaders of Italy from...
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58 of 61 people found the following review helpful.
The Sum of all Her People
By The Ginger Man
Gilmour's pursuit is ambitious both in scope and intent, covering Italy's land, regions and people from Ancient Rome to the Berlusconi administrations in a tightly written 400 pages. He cautions that since this is not an academic work (although 376 source books are cited in the text), he has allowed himself "to be quirkily subjective in (his) selection of topics."
The author begins with a discussion of Italy's defining geographic features: too long; easily invaded; divided from north to south and from east to west; lacking in timber, fish, fishermen, sailors and navigable rivers; malaria prone and multi-racial. Gimour proceeds to review almost every important era of the peninsula's history from Imperial Rome through the Risorgimento and ending with a review of today's economic, social and political challenges. His approach is to analyze the country's centrifugal tendencies, arguing that more traditional histories "had been written from a centripetal view, as if Italian unity had been pre-ordained." Questioning whether unification had been either necessary or inevitable, Gilmour asks: "Were there not just too many Italies for a successful unity?"
Early portions of the text can be a bit challenging as the author weaves together the varied and complex historical threads of the Holy Roman Empire. The book takes off, however, in an extended and lucid description of the Risorgimento. Gilmour sees the latter resulting from a war of expansion conducted by the Piedmontese. "Annexation (of the Papal States and the Kingdom of The Two Sicilies) plainly meant 'piedmontization', the imposition of northern laws, customs and institutions on distant regions with no experience of their workings." The Kingdom of Italy was formally proclaimed in 1861 but, constitutionally, was a greatly expanded Piedmont with a new name. Venice and Rome fell into Italy's hands in 1866 and 1870 respectively more as the result of machinations between Austria, Prussia and France than through Italian military or political victories. In Gilmour's view, nationalist Italy was more imposition than evolution.
"Nearly a century and a half after unification - and more than sixty years after Mussolini's death - Italian politics had still been unable to settle into any kind of rhythm or consistency," concludes the author. Italy's birth rate, economic growth and EU compliance are at low points while its Corruption Index (according to Transparency International ranking) rises. The sense of national unity, Gilmour argues, has disappeared as Italians increasingly question the legitimacy of the state.
Countries such as Britain and France, observe Gilmour, are more important than the sum of their parts. Communal Italy, however, represented in its cities and regions, is the strength of the country and receives the true allegiance of its citizenry. The author quotes Luigi Barzini who stated that Italy "has never been as good as the sum of all her people." The reader is left to conclude that Gilmour agrees with Giustino Fortunato who declared in 1899 "that the unification of Italy was a sin against history and geography."
The Pursuit of Italy ends in a question about its efficacy as a unified nation, one thought to have been settled in the affirmative long ago. As a result, this book is entertaining and truly thought-provoking, which can't help but be a good combination.
31 of 32 people found the following review helpful.
Italy, as "a sin against geography and history"
By R. M. Peterson
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the formal proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy. I have long had a fascination with Italy, which was only whetted by my two too-short trips there. Art, architecture, history, food, wine, warmly hospitable people, and (often) glorious weather and landscapes. But at the same time Italy is such a dysfunctional country - crime, corruption, bloated and inefficient bureaucracy, Berlusconi, and a burgeoning debt crisis. (I realize, of course, that the same problems - minus "Berlusconi" - loom large in the United States.) In THE PURSUIT OF ITALY, David Gilmour does a good job of explaining why in its 150 years Italy, the nation, has had such a star-crossed existence and why it still has an uncertain future.
In Gilmour's view, geography and the vicissitudes of history over millennia have worked against a unified Italian nation. For centuries, the peoples of the peninsula existed -- even thrived, at least in comparison to many others in Europe -- in various city-states (such as Venice, Genoa, Savoy, Florence, Siena, and Naples). Even today, "the city-states remain embedded in Italy's psyche, the crucial component of its people's identity and of their social and cultural inheritance." When the tide of 19th-Century nationalism swept over Italy, there were no inherent ties or associations that predisposed those city-states to unite in a peninsular nation, and the founding fathers - Cavour, Garibaldi, Mazzini, and Victor Emanuel - who brought about that nation-state did so without the support or approval of the majority of the citizenry. Italy as a nation was flawed in conception, and the nation-building since has been badly flawed in execution.
In arguing for his thesis - which I find quite plausible - Gilmour supplies the reader with a one-volume history of Italy (or, perhaps more accurately, history of its many and varied constituent parts). That history is a little tedious at times and the book occasionally takes on the feel of a textbook -- albeit, better written than most textbooks. But on the whole I found THE PURSUIT OF ITALY both engaging and educational. I learned more about Italy than I have from any other single source in my reading career. The book certainly should be considered by anyone looking for a one-volume historical overview of Italy before travelling there.
21 of 22 people found the following review helpful.
A distinctive voice and a very efficient presentation
By MT57
I am not as well read as others in Italian history but this book certainly struck me as a very efficient history of Italy. It begins at the beginning, before Romulus and Remus and goes right up to Berlusconi. It is definitely a history that is filtered through the author's perspective. As the title implies, he sees "Italy" as at best a work in progress which has never achieved the degree of commonality and nationhood that other European states have. And he is skeptical it ever will. His perspective comes through in every chapter.
He has a very strong voice; for example, many times he labels an action or decision "insane" or "lunatic". I found this to enhance my experience as a reader, in contrast with a blander, less judgmental voice.
I thought I would quote one paragraph to illustrate both the efficiency of the presentation and the distinctive voice (p.185)
"The Habsburg government made a more honourable blunder by waiting three days for its ultimatum to expire and thus missing the chance to capture Turin before the French army arrived. The outcome of the campaign was decided by two battles in Lombardy in June, which ended in victories for France but in which its Italian allies played undistinguishable parts. One, Magenta, was so sanguinary that it gave its name to the artists' colour, magenta, but little Piedmontese blood helped inspire the name since the army did not arrive at the battlefield until nightfall, after the struggle was over. At the other, Solferino, the sight of wounded soldiers left to die was so horrifying to one Swiss witness that he went home and founded the International Red Cross."
At times that voice can be a little too monotonously disparaging. This is the case as to pretty much anything that happens after "unification" which might be more aptly called "annexation" since Italy, in his view, never really has been unified, up to and including the era of Berlusconi. At one late point, the author simply amasses one sorry data point after another to show the extent of corruption and the decline of the Italian economy. Finally, in the last chapter, the author declares that the real enduring units of Italian life are the family and the town, and that any larger-scale organization of them annoys the people and should essentially be done away with. So it is not a neutral or bland perspective you will be exposed to, but it is quite well written.
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