'Nostra Patria', 'Nuestra América' : i repubblicani italiani e l’indipendenza cubana

Abstract

The struggle for the emancipation of Cuba was one of the great claims of the Italian patriotism. From the insurgent attempts by Narciso López (1848) to the outbreak of the War of the Ten Years (1868), and up to the independence revolt in Baire (1895), Mazzinian agents, democratic exiles and members of the Historical Far Left supported the revolutionary élites of the Caribbean island, spreading an intense propaganda campaign, financing clandestine expeditions, and founding political associations. On the base of a shared ideal of Atlantic brotherhood, they endorsed the Cuban nationalism on behalf of the universal principles of administrative auto-government, racial equality, and popular sovereignty. This article analyses the evolution of the Cuban solidarity by Italian republicanism, over fifty years, in order to illustrate the global projection of the Risorgimento and post-Risorgimento forces of patriotic tradition during the second half of the 19th-century.