The nature of the Risorgimento : science, environment and nation-building in nineteenth-century Italy

Abstract

This thesis investigates conceptions of nature and their relationship to politics in nineteenth-century Italy. I claim that, in the context of nation-building that followed Italian political unification in 1861, Italian nature was used as an instrument of legitimisation of the nation. This happened in different ways and involved the creation of the very concept of Italian nature, which until then met with little correspondence on either the scientific or cultural level, and only had meaning when referred to the Italian peninsula as a geographical entity. Within the context of the politicisation of nature in Risorgimento and liberal Italy, science played a central role. The production of knowledge about Italian nature was the basis for giving legitimacy to the national territory through the definition of a naturalistic unity of the peninsula, the mapping of its natural resources for exploitation and, finally, the invention of the Italian landscape and the creation of an imagery still partly operating today. These three perspectives, which correspond to the three parts into which the thesis is divided (‘Territorialising Italian Nature’, ‘Exploiting Italian Nature’, ‘Experiencing Italian Nature’) define what I refer to as Patriotic ecology, which I consider to be a crucial moment for Italy’s history of science and environmental history. This thesis aims to be a contribution in the field of the history of science, yet it recognises environmental history as an essential component, showing the inextricable link between the history of nature, science, and politics in nineteenth-century Italy. The choice of archives was determined by a preliminary selection of key figures in the scientific panorama of nineteenth-century Italy, considering both the history of institutions and the contributions of single individuals. Sources include published and unpublished material dated between the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries.