15-17.05.2023, 8:30-Soldiers and Brigands. Biographies, Practices, Imaginaries, 18th-19th Centuries

Seminar series “History of historiography and geography”
Study conference

In person lesson
Conference Room, III floor, Building  D3.

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Abstract
Wars and revolutions that shook the Atlantic space between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries transformed the practice of arms, fuelled reflections on armed citizenship, and fostered the emergence of new military cultures. A long series of armed and ideological conflict culminated in the success of a vision of war as an activity entrusted to professional armies, called upon to represent and defend the fatherland. In the Italian peninsula, regular officers and soldiers played a primary role in the reorganisation of the pre-unitary states after the revolutionary crises and were protagonists of the national construction. At the same time, banditry, an ancient expression of the internal conflicts of rural society, renewed its centrality as a form of irregular armed mobilisation. In the 19th century, it was delegitimised, fought against, and eradicated by the new representatives of the profession of arms. The conference aims to study the individual dimension of these processes, focusing on a sample of command officers and leading bandits to understand how their lives were transformed by such processes. The papers will investigate specific experiences of armed action, banditry, and irregular warfare, in order to understand their characters, operational practices, and narratives.

Coordinator

• Alessandro Capone
  University of Salerno
• Carmine Pinto
  University of Salerno
• Rosanna Giudice
  University of Salerno