An examination of the links between radicalism in Victorian England, and the Risorgimento movement in Italy. This book provides powerful new insights into the history of Italy's long Risorgimento, by tracing the entanglements of the Mazzinian "international". This informal group of men and women crossed the boundary of the Channel and the boundary of class to speak a common language and share a radical ideal: Giuseppe Mazzini's vision of a unified, republican Italy. Published in the radical press, the exile's writings on democracy, education, association and citizenship inspired both Oxford social reformers and self-improving artisans gathering in provincial reading rooms, co-operative societies, republican clubs and educational institutes: for them republican Italy became a transnationaldream. Indeed, when Italy was unified under a constitutional monarch in 1861, British Mazzinians were bitterly disappointed. Setting off for Italy on their first "co-operative tour" in 1888, East London workers embarked on an educational pilgrimage, dotted with Mazzinian landmarks. Despite the fin de siècle crisis, Victorian radicals' enduring faith in Italy's democratic future remained steadfast. Indeed, when Fascists subsequently appropriated Mazzini's national dream, post-Victorian Mazzinians would unequivocally voice their support for Italian anti-Fascists, who championed the principles of global democracy. Drawing on a wide range of material, the author adds a crucialnew dimension to the history of Victorian radicalism in Britain, and to the "new history of the Risorgimento". Marcella Pellegrino Sutcliffe is a Research Fellow of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge.

This book examines the intersections among literary works by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Mary Shelley and Wilkie Collins, journalism, parliamentary records and pamphlets, to establish Britain's imaginative investment in the seismic geopolitical realignment of Italian unification.

A brilliant exposition of how the Bible and classical antiquity are central to the formation of Victorian self-understanding.

This collection of twelve essays reviews the history of welfare in Britain over the past 150 years. It focuses on the ideas that have shaped the development of British social policy, and on the thinkers who have inspired and also contested the welfare state. It thereby constructs an intellectual history of British welfare since the concept first emerged at the end of the nineteenth century. The essays divide into four sections. The first considers the transition from laissez-faire to social liberalism from the 1870s, and the enduring impact of late-Victorian philosophical idealism on the development of the welfare state. It focuses on the moral philosophy of T. H. Green and his influence on key figures in the history of British social policy like William Beveridge, R. H. Tawney, and William Temple. The second section is devoted to the concept of 'planning' which was once, in the mid-twentieth century, at the heart of social policy and its implementation, but which has subsequently fallen out of favour. A third section examines the intellectual debate over the welfare state since its creation in the 1940s. Though a consensus seemed to have emerged during the Second World War over the desirability and scope of a welfare state extending 'from the cradle to the grave', libertarian and conservative critiques endured and re-emerged a generation later. A final section examines social policy and its implementation more recently, both at grass roots level in a study of community action in West London in the districts made infamous by the fire at Grenfell Tower in 2017, and at a systemic level where different models of welfare provision are shown to be in uneasy co-existence today. The collection is a tribute to Jose Harris, emeritus professor of history in the University of Oxford and a pioneer of the intellectual history of social policy. Taken together, these essays conduct the reader through the key phases and debates in the history of British welfare.

"This book examines how a group of transnational British-Italian women affiliated with the exiled patriots of the Italian Left repurposed traditionally feminine activities, such as fundraising, gift-giving, maternity, and memory collection, to make a substantial contribution to Italian Unification and state-building. Through their actions, Mary Chambers, Sara Nathan, Giorgina Saffi, Julia Salis Schwabe, and Jessie White Mario transcended the boundaries of acceptable behavior for middle-class women and participated in the broader female emancipation movement. By drawing attention to their activities, this book reveals how nineteenth-century female activists achieved their most revolutionary goals by using conservative, domestic, or anti-Catholic language. Adding to the growing understanding of the Italian Risorgimento as a transnational phenomenon, it also shows how non-Catholic and non-Italian women participated in the creation and development of the Italian state. Finally, the book argues for the continuing importance of religion in both politics and philanthropy throughout the nineteenth century."

This book offers a unique and fascinating examination of British and Irish responses to Italian independence and unification in the mid-nineteenth century. Chapters explore the interplay of religion, politics, exile, feminism, colonialism and romanticism in fuelling impassioned debates on the 'Italian question' on both sides of the Irish Sea.

This book examines key cases of terrorist violence to show that the invention of terrorism was linked to the birth of modernity in Europe, Russia and the United States, rather than to Tsarist despotism in 19th century Russia or to Islam sects in Medieval Persia. Combining a highly readable historical narrative with analysis of larger issues in social and political history, the author argues that the dissemination of news about terrorist violence was at the core of a strategy that aimed for political impact on rulers as well as the general public. Dietze's lucid account also reveals how the spread of knowledge about terrorist acts was, from the outset, a transatlantic process. Two incidents form the book's centerpiece. The first is the failed attempt to assassinate French Emperor Napolon III by Felice Orsini in 1858, in an act intended to achieve Italian unity and democracy. The second case study offers a new reading of John Brown's raid on the arsenal at Harpers Ferry in 1859, as a decisive moment in the abolitionist struggle and occurrences leading to the American Civil War. Three further examples from Germany, Russia, and the US are scrutinized to trace the development of the tactic by first imitators. With their acts of violence, the "invention" of terrorism was completed. Terrorism has existed as a tactic since then and has essentially only been adapted through the use of new technologies and methods.