academic.mu.edu/meissnerd/garibaldi.html Giuseppe Garibaldi: A Guerrilla with a Dream Abstract The great Italian nationalist warrior, Giuseppe Garibaldi, continually came to the aid of those fighting for liberation from oppression. Although sometimes too trusting and prone to exploitation, this altruistic hero gained support far and wide for his revolutionary causes. He played integral roles in revolutions in both South America and Italy. This resilient guerrilla fighter and his band of red shirts were a major component of the Risorgimento, the movement for Italian unification. By driving out foreign forces from southern Italy, Garibaldi and his army were as much, if not more, of a factor than any politician in the eventual success of the Italian unification. Research Report In the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789, new socio-political ideologies began to emerge as a result of conflict within and between classes. Liberalism, nationalism, socialism, and conservatism evolved from the circumstances surrounding the revolution. Nationalism, in particular, became a dominant force throughout Europe, and this newfound devotion to the concerns and the culture of the nation fueled many of the revolutions that occurred in Europe in the 19th century. Few people embodied this nationalistic spirit more than the Italian freedom fighter, Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882). Years of political division and foreign control over Italy led to Garibaldi’ s strong desire for liberation and unification of his country. He spent his entire life battling militarily – in his improvisational, guerrilla style – and politically for those who were enslaved and oppressed. He employed the ideal of nationalism to drive himself and his troops. Although he spent nearly ten years of his life devoted to the liberation of the Rio Grande do Sud and Uruguay, he longed to unify his homeland of Italy. His hard-fought efforts in Italy led, for better or worse, to his long desired goal of Italian unification. If not primarily the cause of the success of the Risorgimento, Giuseppe Garibaldi, who was heavily influenced by his time spent in South America, played a pivotal role in the Risorgimento. Oddly enough, the great champion of the Italian cause was not technically born as an Italian. Garibaldi was born in Nice on July 4, 1807, to Domenico Garibaldi and Rosa Raimondi. At the time, Nice was a part of France, under the control of Napoleon I, but would later be given to Italy by Napoleon in 1815 while he was carving up Europe (Davenport 4). Fortunately for Garibaldi, the spirit of nationalism was already under development during the time of his childhood, for he never would have been able to direct his revolutions without harnessing this power (de Polnay, 1). At the time of his birth, his family did not even own a house. His poverty would help him gain popularity among commoners during the Italian revolution because he could present himself as a man of the people (Hibbert 4). His father was a sailor, and Garibaldi came to know the sea well. When he was only eight years old, he was said to have saved a washerwoman from drowning. His heroic disposition seemed to have emerged early in life (Smith 6). In 1825, he journeyed to Rome with his father, and this month-long stay in the city greatly shaped his later experiences with Rome. In witnessing this bleak Papal Rome, he was convinced that the city had to be freed from its ecclesiastical rule and be made into the capital of a unified Italy. Garibaldi further developed his personal doctrines and values while traveling on the sea. During one of his sea voyages, Garibaldi met a group of Saint-Simonians, who taught him the doctrines of universal brotherhood and the extinction of classes inherent in the philosophy of Saint-Simon, an early socialist thinker. He initially empathized with the Saint-Simonians because they were a persecuted group, but he soon became attracted by their beliefs (Ridley 24). These doctrines emphasized the importance of a society whose leadership depended on merit rather than the heredity of classes. The Saint-Simonians also taught him that a hero is a person who takes on the problems of another country as his own and offers to fight for this country (de Polnay 5). Garibaldi told Dumas, the writer of one of Garibaldi’s autobiographies, how important these teachings were to him: Strange glimmerings now began to illuminate my mind, by the aid of which I saw a ship, no longer as a vehicle charged with the mission of exchanging the good of one country for those of another, but as a winged messenger bearing the word of the Lord and the sword of the Archangel (de Polnay 5). The lessons that Garibaldi learned under the Saint-Simonians would later drive and influence his involvement in the independence movements in South America. ....... -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
[RC] [ RC ] Garibaldi and the Saint-Simonians
BILROJ via Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community Fri, 28 Aug 2015 19:41:49 -0700
