| Abstrakt: |
Studies on nationalism in the Italian historiography have excluded 19th-century Italy from world history, yet Italians were active on the global stage as merchants, scientists, navigators, and colonial agents. Using a global microhistory approach and focusing on the Mediterranean and the Americas, Riall considers «exceptional normal» Italians, men like Nino Bixio and Antonio Raimondi, whose lives were defined by mobility and an opportunistic approach to the spaces opened up by global capitalism. A focus on their practices attenuates the celebration of Italians as a good people or «brava gente». It also proposes a new understanding of Italian «offshore» identity beyond the nation-state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
