Parabola del “revisionismo risorgimentale”

Within the framework of the persistent historiographic and public debate on the “Risorgimento problem” – to use the famous definition of Rosario Romeo – which has always characterised the Italian political cultures, this essay will focus on the development of “Risorgimento revisionism.” Exemplified by Romeo and by the querelle running between Nicola Matteucci and Augusto Del Noce between the 1950s and 1960s, the question of Risorgimento revisionism finds its origins in the thinking of Alfredo Oriani, which already contains all the topoi of revisionism: the incompleteness of the Italian revolution, the outcome based on compromise and opportunism and the absence of a post-Unification ideal. This imprint would be enlarged and re-articulated thereafter: first of all by Mario Missiroli who would focus on the hypothesis of the lack of religious reform, a thesis that in turn would be analysed by Piero Gobetti. Then, the revisionism elaborated by the Fascist regime and the anti-revisionist response provided by anti-Fascist historiography (i.e. Croce, Omodeo, Salvatorelli), by Antonio Gramsci and the analysis of the Justice and Liberty movement. After that, the less well-renowned interpretations of Giuseppe Antonio Borgese, Giulio Colamarino, and Fabio Cusin. The essay ends with a reference to the considerations of Del Noce, which presented as “revisionist” in actual fact in recuperating the pivotal nature of Vincenzo Gioberti’s Risorgimento proposal, the philosopher – argues the author – offer us an anti-revisionist analysis. And lastly, Romeo’s critique of Risorgimento historiography (Marxist and non-Marxist) accused of not having understood the great theme of modernisation which indeed draws its origins from the Risorgimento.