Curriculum vitæ
In 2021 he received his master’s degree in Historical Sciences from the University of Milan with a grade of 110/110 cum laude, presenting a thesis in History of Political Thought and Institutions entitled “Giuseppe Elia Benza. Pensiero e azione di un repubblicano ligureure (1802-1889),” deserving the award of the XXV edition of the Spadolini Nuova Antologia Prize and the subject of the paper presented at the XIX edition of the Pomeriggi Universitari organized by the Istituto Internazionale di Studi Liguri.
| Tutor Carmine Pinto |  | Co-Tutor Alessandro Bonvini |
Research project
Title: Republican Radicalism in Western Europe. Conspiracies, propaganda, and transnational networks (1849-1871)
The failure of the “peoples’ spring” did not spell the end of the republican dream in Europe.
Between 1849 and 1871, activists, exiles and radical subversives rejected the collaboration of the moderate current with monarchist forces to resume revolutionary activity. The latter shared the same political agenda, based on the defense of the national principle, the protection of civil liberties and the equality of citizens; they practiced similar organizational forms, such as secret associationism, politically based brotherhood, mutual assistance and mutual aid; and they pursued common strategies of action: from insurrectional methods to illegal propaganda through the press. Despite this commonality of objectives, there was no lack of divergence on some fundamental issues, such as the federative or unitary structure of the state; the dictatorial or non-dictatorial transition following the revolutionary moment; and the full intervention, or total absence, of public intervention in the economic sphere.
In the thirty years under consideration, republican geography was shaped by the activism and dense mobility of radicals within recognizable transnational networks existing between pre-unification Italy, with strong concentrations in the Ligurian Riviera and large cities such as Naples, Florence, and Bologna; the Iberian peninsula, in particular, in the Andalusian area and Catalonia; in France, on both the Nice and Pyrenean sides; and among the Mediterranean islands. In these territories, during the period between the collapse of the Roman Republic and the Paris Commune, major insurrections and uprisings were attempted: the 1854 Lunar uprisings, the Spanish Septembrian experience, and the anti-Bonapartist agitations that culminated in the proclamation of the Commune were just some of the republican uprisings that engaged and armed European radicals.
Beginning with the study of sources and documents preserved in Italian and Spanish archives, the research will attempt to reconstruct the conspiratorial activities, ideological programs and strategies of action of the European radical galaxy in order to understand the centrality of the republican option in mid-nineteenth-century Europe of monarchies, as well as the continuities and connections between democratic-national radicalism and emerging socialist internationalism.
