Bulletin n. 1/2012
June 2012
CONTENTS
  • Section A) The theory and practise of the federal states and multi-level systems of government
  • Section B) Global governance and international organizations
  • Section C) Regional integration processes
  • Section D) Federalism as a political idea
    • Dal Lago Enrico
    La Guerra Civile americana, il Risorgimento italiano e i nazionalismi europei dell’Ottocento: histoire croisée e histoire comparée
    in Giornale di storia costituzionale , n. 22, 2/2011 ,  2011
    Recently, there has been a growing interest by American historians toward the historiography of European nationalisms, with a view to relating the American Civil War (1861-1865) to the wider context of nineteenth-century nation-building. In exploring the possibilities of such a connection, it is useful to refer to two particular research methods in the “transnational” analysis of historical phenomena in Europe and America: histoire croisée – or “entangled history”, centred upon the investigation of links and contacts – and histoire comparée – or “comparative history”, focused on the study of similarities and differences. In relating both the causes of the American Civil War and the war to nineteenth-century nationalisms, we can start from the acknowledgement that the North-American restructuring following a warfare of continental scale led to the new foundation of a national American state based upon principles and ideals analogous – and therefore suitable to an investigation through the histoire croisée method – to those of contemporary European nations, and thus comparable to them through the use of the histoire comparée. With particular reference to Italy in the age of Risorgimento, we can see, for example, how, among American Abolitionists and Italian Democrats, William Lloyd Garrison and Giuseppe Mazzini had a lot in common in terms of ideals; also in the past, historians had already noted a certain ideological affinity between Abraham Lincoln’s Republican Party and Camillo Cavour’s Moderate Liberals. All in all, the American Civil War represented a crucial episode in the phenomenon concerning the advancing of liberal and democratic nationalisms, which shook the western world, Europe and Italy, between 1848 and 1870; thus, the Civil War was an event whose significance in political terms can only be defined by using the adjective “global”.
    ©2001 - 2020 - Centro Studi sul Federalismo - P. IVA 94067130016