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Between 7 and 16 July 1647 a popular revolt, led by a young fishmonger, Masaniello, shook the city of Naples. The killing of Masaniello, however, did not lead to the end of the riots. On the contrary, the revolt involved the entire kingdom of Naples, radicalized in an anti-Spanish sense and resulted in the proclamation of the Republic and the call of a French prince, the Duke of Guisa. On these events, and especially on the fracture that permanently opposed people and nobles, historiography has long debated. It is possible, however, today, also on the basis of new archival documents, to propose a different interpretation of the events, which integrates the two moments and allows an updated reading of the revolt/revolution in Naples. Entre el 7 y el 16 de julio de 1647 una revuelta popular, dirigida por un joven pescadero, Masaniello, sacudió la ciudad de Nápoles. El asesinato de Masaniello, sin embargo, no condujo al fin de los disturbios. Por el contrario, la revuelta involucró a todo el reino de Nápoles, se radicalizó en un sentido antiespañol y culminó en la proclamación de la República y la llamada de un príncipe francés, el duque de Guisa. Sobre estos eventos, y especialmente sobre la fractura que se oponía permanentemente al pueblo y a los nobles, la historiografía ha debatido durante mucho tiempo. Sin embargo, hoy en día es posible, también sobre la base de nuevos documentos de archivo, proponer una interpretación diferente de los acontecimientos, que integra los dos momentos y permite una lectura actualizada de la revuelta/revolución de Nápoles.

This article seeks to ground the study of the origins of the mafia in the context of nineteenth-century Italian politics. The approach taken is to link changes in discourse with the processes by which criminal figures were identified, controlled, classified, represented and (eventually) made part of folklore. Such an approach involves linking the literary imagination of the nineteenth century with political context and with the theory and practice of the criminal justice system as they combined to define crime in public discourse.

RésuméCet article propose une discussion sur trois publications récentes et importantes consacrées à la Révolution française: le livre de Timothy Tackett,The Coming of the Terror in the French Revolution, celui de Jonathan Israel,Revolutionary Ideas: An Intellectual History of the French Revolution from the Rights of Man to Robespierreet, enfin, celui de Haim Burstin,Révolutionnaires. Pour une anthropologie politique de la Révolution française. Ces ouvrages se caractérisent notamment par un retour bienvenu à des interprétations générales renouvelées par de nouvelles approches théoriques. Le processus révolutionnaire est donc envisagé sous de multiples points de vue: le premier se fonde sur le courant historiographique connu sous le nom de « nouvelle histoire des émotions » pour expliquer l’obsession de la conspiration et, donc, la Terreur; le deuxième propose une utilisation nouvelle de l’histoire traditionnelle des idées, considérée comme capable d’expliquer les prétendus « faits concrets »; le troisième envisage l’expérience révolutionnaire selon une perspective inspirée par l’anthropologie en établissant une typologie afin de la caractériser. Cependant, tous sont unis par leur résistance à analyser la structure politique en tant que telle, c’est-à-dire à étudier comment fonctionnaient concrètement les institutions politiques pendant la Révolution.

This essay is a discussion of three recent and important books on the French Revolution: Timothy Tackett's The Coming of the Terror in the French Revolution, Jonathan Israel's Revolutionary Ideas: An Intellectual History of the French Revolution from the Rights of Man to Robespierre, and Haim Burstin's Révolutionnaires. Pour une anthropologie politique de la Révolution française. All three volumes are characterized by a welcome return to general interpretations based on new theoretical approaches and consider the revolutionary process from multiple points of view: the first uses the historiographical current known as the “new history of emotions” to explain the contemporary obsession with conspiracies and thence the Terror; the second proposes a new approach based on the traditional history of ideas, considered capable of explaining the so-called “hard facts”; the third envisages the revolutionary experience from an anthropological perspective, constructing a typology in order to characterize it. Nevertheless, all three are united by a reluctance to analyze the political structure itself; in other words, to investigate the concrete workings of political institutions during the Revolution.

This essay investigates the significance that historical repetition had for people living during the French Revolution. The aim is to assess to what extent the idea that events might repeat themselves in the future influenced the historical actors of the time. After a brief analysis of the two main models used to understand historical repetition, those of Chateaubriand and Marx, and a critical review of how historical repetition has been treated in the historiographical literature, we discuss the sociological category of the self- fulfilling prophecy as a tool to understand the arguments put forward by historical actors. From an analysis of the debates on the likelihood of past events repeating themselves, which took place at crucial times during the French revolutionary process, we reach the conclusion that what these instances are not self-fulfilling prophecies. We show how these arguments may be viewed as attempts to assess the probability of a given event, but also as performative tools capable of influencing the outcome of a situation and in some way, unexpectedly, «constructing» it. We conclude that the concept of historical repetition had a much greater bearing on the French Revolution than it has so far been supposed.

Ce travail entend proposer une nouvelle réflexion sur les « classes dangereuses », concentrée sur l’étude des origines historiques de la camorra napolitaine, phénomène de criminalité organisée parmi les plus importants à l’échelle mondiale. Dans la Naples des Bourbons, l’expression camorristi renvoie à des sujets sociaux marginaux, des malfaiteurs vivant de l’extorsion exercée dans les bagnes, les tripots et les maisons à femmes. Au cours des turbulents jours de l’unification italienne, on commence à les imaginer comme membres d’une secte légendaire, toute-puissante et influente, la camorra, une société secrète réglée, avec une hiérarchie, des coutumes et son propre argot, qui s’étendrait à la société tout entière. L’article analyse les raisons de cette transformation, étudiant les sources (essentiellement littéraires) et les dynamiques (essentiellement politiques), montrant ainsi les processus de criminalisation et de folklorisation qui marquent une transformation discursive très importante pour l’imaginaire collectif italienne jusqu’à nos jours.

Agostino Bistarelli nel suo volume Gli esuli del Risorgimento sviluppa il suo discorso sull’esilio con riferimento essenzialmente alla generazione emigrata a seguito dei fatti del 1821. Il testo di Bistarelli e una ricostruzione attenta e molto puntuale che racconta non solo le esperienze politiche ma anche quelle personali della prima ondata di esuli italiani, seguendone le vicende nei vari paesi dove si stabilirono. Attraverso questo racconto emergono elementi che consentono di porre questioni fondamentali sulle radici dell’impegno profuso dagli esuli per la causa italiana e sulla natura del nesso tra lotte per la liberta e patriottismo.

This article is an investigation of a category that hal longly influenced the social sciences as well as the historiography. It tries to make the history of the emergence and the use of the idea of generation amongst authors like Lucien Febvre, Karl Mannheim, Ortega y Gasset and Pierre Nora but is not only an exercise of history of a concept, on the mood of the Koselleck very well known Lexicon: it would be an attempt to test the euristic capacity of the generation idea, that is to say as a tool able to product scientific results. In this sense its aim is to show how this category lives not only in the scientific field but also in the public arena, not only as a rationale discourse but also in a mythic fashion. It tries to test in which sense and within which limits it is today workable.

Foreign visitors to Naples in the 18th Century gave accounts of a certain kind of destitute homeless population termed as «lazzari». Originally portrayed as the unruly and dangerous scum of the city’s lowlife, the lazzari undergo a transformation and are subsequently viewed as the prototype for a particular Mediterranean identity: folk who get along with little yet get the best out of life. In reviewing the various changes of outlook that in time led to the crystallisation of the «lazzaro» stereotype, the author attempts to demonstrate how the lazzari or lazzaroni cannot be taken as representing a specific social class that was twice seen to play a political role (in 1647-48 and in 1789), but are rather an expression of a political tradition that is responsible for a number of «social» arguments and representations that finally end up creating representations and «social» subjects.[...]