<i>Southern Europe in the Age of Revolutions</i> by Maurizio Isabella

Recasting the traditional periodization of the French Revolution and Restoration (1789–1848) as the Age of Revolutions (c. 1770–1848), scholars in recent decades have been exploring a wider period to understand better a global revolutionary wave that engulfed the space from South America to Asia. The new paradigm stems partly from an interest in imperial peripheries, where the circulation of ideas and populations triggered a crisis in sovereignty and dealt a deathblow to absolutism. Isabella’s comprehensive volume depicts the moment when constitutions replaced kings in southern Europe.Central to the book’s argument are the veterans of the Napoleonic wars who risked life and limb on the campaign to return home to regions torn by social inequities, political oppression, and economic hardship. By launching revolutions in the name of popular sovereignty, army officers mobilized the population and generated a sense of belonging to a broader national community. The explosion of popular protests and printed material spurred on greater participation in government and gave birth to a public sphere.Following the approach of Stites, Armitage, and Venturi, Isabella is drawn to the margins of the European world where the currents of change influenced and reflected the affairs of the great capitals.1 The book profiles the colorful military professionals (Guglielmo Pepe, Alexandros Ypsilantis, Rafael Riego, Bernardo Correia de Castro e Sepúlveda) at the helm of various insurrections, civil wars, and constitutional experiments in Portugal, Spain, Piedmont, Naples and Sicily, and Greece in the 1820s.The volume begins with the spread of secret societies and their networks, an underappreciated element in the process of popular mobilization. In southern Europe, the experience of foreign occupation during the Napoleonic wars promoted the general public’s feeling of resistance to central authority. Championing popular sovereignty, regional veteran armies came out of the wars with greater social prestige and political influence. Conscription entered the constitutional discourse and political journalism reinforced the bond between the military and politics. Isabella carefully charts the public documents (pronunciamientos, manifestos, declarations, petitions) and other communication strategies that addressed audiences from the local village to the global stage. The author perceives “a remarkable conceptual convergence” among these materials based on an egalitarian vision of the army, the idea of the nation as family, popular sovereignty, and sacrifice in defense of the homeland (99).The new patriotic armies were not monolithic. The civil wars and revolts against and for constitutions in the 1820s attest to the ideological cleavages and political disagreements between the people and the military. Economic dislocations in rural areas compounded the disorder as the poorest struggled to adjust to political and territorial vicissitudes. Isabella argues that the constant movement of refugees, economic migrants, freedom fighters, counter-revolutionaries, and military volunteers kindled political alliances and reinforced a sense of belonging to a shared national community. Military interventions inspired mobilization and political participation from below, but the reorganization and governance of new territories increased the likelihood of polarization and conspiracy.Isabella reviews in detail the public rituals, symbols, and cultural practices that turned individuals into communities of citizens. As electoral rights extended to males, an unprecedented burst of patriotic activity (newspapers, songs, ceremonies, sermons) deplored divisions in society and promoted solidarity. Counterrevolutionaries (or popular royalists) were not impotent, and the tension between the urge to centralize and the demands for local autonomy led to postrevolutionary restorations built on constitutional compromises—with support from the clergy.Isabella succeeds in untangling the events in the three peninsulas and Sicily, and the narrative remains integrated: Asymmetries and similarities are compared at each stage, and the author is comfortable noting when events do not readily fit the narrative themes. That being said, the Greek scenario at times appears incongruous (or absent from the discussion), echoing the exceptionalism present in the historiography. An underexplored theme consists of foreign diplomatic interventions and military occupations (the French in Spain, the British in the Ionians, the Austrians in Piedmont, Ibrahim Pasha in Greece), which, as the author points out, were crucial determinants in each region’s trajectory. Ironically, the pathbreaking experience of southern Europe appears at times more progressive (or modern) than the center in terms of citizenship, political rights, and duties.Well versed in secondary sources, the book could have been trimmed, yet its prose remains engaging, and its analysis is embedded in the narrative. Isabella has contributed a convincing argument about the spread of political awareness and the existence of broad coalitions in favor of political change. The volume thoroughly integrates southern Europe into the Age of Revolutions.