Introduction
Introduction
This book examines the extent to which the United States' political experience influenced the political thought and imagination of the Risorgimento during the period 1763–1865. Drawing on various source materials such as early Italian histories of the American Republic, parliamentary documents, memoirs, and correspondence, the book shows how abstract political ideas were reflected in Italy's wider cultural imagination from the end of the Seven Years' War in the early 1760s to the American Civil War a century later, which coincided with the Unification of Italy under the crown of Savoy. It argues that Italian ideas of the United States during the period of the Risorgimento were not blind admiration for American political experiments. Instead, Italians engaged with what they knew about the early Republic in relation to their own constitutional history, as well as to a whole range of different European experiences.
Keywords: cultural imagination, United States, political experience, political thought, Risorgimento, America, Italy, Italian unification, Europe
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