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From the last quarter of the eighteenth century onwards, the testimonies of and studies on China grew in number in Europe and gave rise to a rich repertoire of historical, travel, memoir, scholarly and diplomatic literature of increasing importance. This surge in information on, communication with and representation of the Chinese world within European opinion continued to intensify at the beginning of the nineteenth century, revealing mainly critical attitudes towards China. This was in contrast with the way, in the seventeenth century and into the middle of the eighteenth, China had been the object of admiration and even of idealization in Europe. How did Italy, from the second half of the eighteenth century, participate in this great European debate over China? The existing literature investigated some eighteenth-century figures but without reconstructing in any comprehensive way the sources and channels through which Italian culture developed an image of China, in a dialogue with European culture. This essay analyses the way in which Italian culture participated in this European debate, focusing on authors and works from the beginning of the nineteenth century, little considered so far for the reconstruction of this chapter in the history of Italian culture. Early nineteenth-century Italian culture expressed a lively interest in China with various publishing initiatives of a different nature and character. This essay takes into consideration some of these publications, notably those by Giulio Ferrario, Cesare Cantù, Davide Bertolotti, Giuseppe La Farina, Giandomenico Romagnosi and Onorato Martucci. They allow us to follow the evolution of the vision of China proposed to the Italian reader in the period prior to the appearance of Carlo Cattaneo’s and Giuseppe Ferrari’s important writings on China, respectively in 1861 in 1865. This contribution is intended to show not just the lively interest towards Chinese history and civilization in Italian culture, in relationship with the most advanced European knowledge on the subject, but also the persistence of the Enlightenment legacy and its contribution to the development of a true global perspective

Due to early-modern geographical discoveries and the development of oceanic connections to the New World and the East, Italy was excluded from the inner circle of global powers and her submission to foreign dominations pushed her to the margins of historical processes. From then onwards, first the Iberian and then the northern European powers became the main protagonists on the historical scene, rather than Italy, despite her exceptional artistic and cultural creativity and the magnificence of her princely courts in the age of the Renaissance. This historical thesis, here condensed to relatively few words, requires substantial qualifications, especially from a cultural and intellectual historical point of view, and recent studies in global cultural history might, in this, prove particularly helpful. The present volume, which collects works carried out as part of the Italian National Project (Prin 2015) “Translating Worlds: Towards a Global History of Italian Culture (1450-1914)”, is intended to be a contribution towards this research perspectives. Global Perspectives in Modern Italian Culture presents a series of unexplored case studies from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, each demonstrating how travellers, scientists, Catholic missionaries, scholars and diplomats coming from the Italian peninsula contributed to understandings of various global issues during the age of early globalization. It also examines how these individuals represented different parts of the world to an Italian audience, and how deeply Italian culture drew inspiration from the increasing knowledge of world ‘Otherness’. The first part of the book focuses on the production of knowledge, drawing on texts written by philosophers, scientists, historians and numerous other first-hand eyewitnesses. The second part analyses the dissemination and popularization of knowledge by focussing on previously understudied published works and initiatives aimed at learned Italian readers and the general public. Written in a lively and engaging manner, this book will appeal to scholars and students of early modern and modern European history, as well as those interested in global history.

The article takes its cue from Antoine Lilti’s book, L’héritage des Lumières (2018) and retraces the themes dealt with by the author with the intention of describing the central problem areas in the culture of the Enlightenment. The author’s reflection focuses on the issues of Western economic and colonial expansion and the conflictual nature of the commercial civilization of the West, highlighting how European Enlightenment – the analysis focuses on French culture and, subordinately, Scottish culture – has shown a lively awareness of the problems of contemporary globalization and the demands it has subjected ethics, the vision of history, the conception of society and political power, religious ideas. These phenomena have influenced the development of a cosmopolitan attitude, paradoxically divided between acceptance of diversities and eurocentrism that is, in its contradictory aspects of recognition of the variety of human cultures and of universalistic tension, aimed at affirming the superiority of the values of the white, expanding West and the historical, almost messianic necessity of their global spreading. The article then dwells on the problems of modernity and politics, the other two central aspects of Enlightenment reflection as it is retraced by the author of the book: modernity as the development of a public media communication dimension and as a profound change in the space of private subjectivity; and politics as a space for the affirmation of rights and freedom in which the role played by the intellectual has been experienced by the Enlightenment in a conflictual and contradictory way, between challenge of and cooperation with powerful absolute sovereigns. The final part of the article dwells precisely on how the return to the Enlightenment has represented in various historical periods, as an inspiration for the critical use of reason, doubt and subjective engagement, a necessary moment for the redefinition of the tasks of intellectuals in the face of the conflicts of contemporary societies.

The essay intends to propose a reflection on the intersections between colonial studies and colonialism and historiographical perspectives of ‘global history’. It starts from the reconstruction of the recent emergence and use of the term ‘colonialism’ in the English, French and Italian languages, linking it to international political developments after World War II and to the subsequent opening up of new forms of historical research on colonial and imperial phenomena on a global scale and in comparative terms. It points out that, in the field of colonial studies, a specialism has developed that has investigated the specificity of the forms of colonial domination on the economic, political, social, cultural and religious levels, drawing a particular impulse from post-colonial studies and the emergence of non-Western historiographies. A consideration of the research paths of some of the most important contemporary historians of colonialism and empires serves to show how precisely this kind of experience, with the ability to confront different sources and to take different points of view from the traditional ones of Western historiography, has opened some of the most fruitful paths towards global history, with its drive towards denationalization and criticism of Eurocentrism, and its adoption of pluralist perspectives on progress, modernization and civilization. Finally, it illustrates a series of historiographic fields which, starting from the study of colonial phenomena, have favoured and enriched the emergence of a global view of the past. It concludes with a reflection on the persistent and still visible relationship in the present between colonial legacies and macro-phenomena of a global nature.

Questo volume è il frutto di un convegno sull’opera di Christopher Bayly tenutosi a Napoli nel marzo del 2016. A meno di un anno dalla morte, gli organizzatori intendevano promuovere una prima ricognizione del ricco e complesso lascito scientifico dello storico inglese, chiamando a collaborarvi un gruppo di studiosi di varie competenze specialistiche. Ciascuno dei sette saggi si focalizza su uno delle straordinaria sequenza di grandi libri con i quali Bayly ha contribuito a dissodare, nell’arco di un quarantennio, terreni di ricerca tra i più avanzati della storiografia internazionale: le radici locali del movimento nazionalista indiano (Maurizio Griffo), il ruolo della società autoctona nell’instaurazione del dominio europeo in India (Michelguglielmo Torri), la natura e i limiti del potere coloniale (Guido Abbattista), la genesi del Secondo Impero britannico (Teodoro Tagliaferri), la transizione alla modernità globale (Marco Meriggi), la globalizzazione del liberalismo e del nazionalismo (Maurizio Isabella, Laura Di Fiore). Obiettivo comune degli autori è quello di illustrare le tappe salienti del percorso che ha condotto Bayly, in virtù del successo arriso a The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914 (2004), a diventare figura tra le più rappresentative dell’odierno revival della World History.

Analisi comparata di Histoire mondiale de la France, sous la direction de Patrick Boucheron, Coordination Nicolas Delalande, Florian Mazel, Yann Potin, Pierre Singaravélou Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 2017 (Janvier) (=HMF) e di Storia mondiale dell’Italia, a cura di Andrea Giardina, con la collaborazione di Emmanuel Betta, Maria Pia Donato, Amedeo Feniello, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2017 (novembre) (=SMI).

L’avvento per tappe inarrestabili di una scala globale della storia europea a partire dall’inizio del ‘500 rappresenta uno dei caratteri fondanti dell’epoca moderna, e l’introduzione graduale del mondo cinese nella sfera della coscienza, oltre che degli interessi, europei, come già sottolineato da Paul Hazard nel 1935, ne ha costituito una delle manifestazioni più significative. Più della scoperta dei mondi ‘selvaggi’ americani, l’accostamento alla civiltà cinese, parallelo al lento e difficoltoso tentativo di stabilire rapporti commerciali duraturi con il Regno di Mezzo e di farne l’obiettivo di un temerario progetto di cristianizzazione, ha rappresentato per gli Europei una sfida cognitiva di enorme portata. Il libro recente di Antonella Romano e altri volumi discussi nel rpesente contributo puntualizzano le questioni storiofgafiche aperte e lo stato del dibattito

The Histoire des Deux Indes is a crucial observatory for understanding how late French Enlightenment dealt with China in terms not anymore of a political and social myth, but as a problem. Diderot's contributions are partiocularly relevanto to clarify in which sense China was a problem in a global history in the eyes of the leading French Enlightenment thinkers.

La Cina ha per secoli attirato l’interesse di osservatori e commentatori europei, costretti però a misurarsi non solo con gli ostacoli posti dalla lingua, dalla prassi amministrativa e da una mentalità aliena dall’apertura verso gli stranieri, ma anche con le difficoltà di interpretazione di una realtà istituzionale e culturale profondamente diversa da quella occidentale. Se da un lato la Cina imperiale si configurava come un apparato burocratico complesso, caratterizzato da una struttura fortemente gerarchica e basato su prassi legislative molto articolate, dall’altro si presentava come un edificio politico-istituzionale di natura monarchica, fortemente centralizzato nella figura dell’imperatore e indissolubilmente legato alla tradizione e a un patrimonio secolare di leggi scritte. Nel ‘700, man mano che gli occidentali cercavano di stringere relazioni commerciali e politiche sempre più strette, apparve evidente questo paradosso: la Cina, paese straordinariamente ricco di risorse e in piena espansione economica, demografica e territoriale, restava ancorata alle antiche tradizioni al punto da generare tra aspetti di dinamismo e inerzia della tradizione un corto circuito che agli occhi degli occidentali apparve come causa di stazionarietà. Tutti questi elementi concorsero nei secoli, dalla metà del ‘500 all’800 inoltrato, alla formazione dell’“enigma Cina”, i cui lati di mistero e di ambiguità incominciarono ad essere meglio compresi grazie ai contributi di eruditi e missionari, autori di importanti traduzioni e compendi di testi classici del confucianesimo, alle quali si aggiunsero, agli inizi del sec. XIX, le prime traduzioni del Codice penale Qing. Il testo giuridico cinese, risalente all’epoca Tang (VII-X sec. d. C.), fu oggetto di frequenti ritocchi, modifiche e adattamenti, l’ultimo dei quali, nel 1805, fu quello adoperato dagli europei per le versioni in inglese, francese, spagnolo e italiano, dopo che già una parziale traduzione era stata eseguita in russo alla fine del ‘700. La disponibilità nelle maggiori lingue europee di un testo giuridico fondamentale per il funzionamento delle istituzioni imperiali Qing fu una acquisizione importantissima non solo per una migliore conoscenza delle istituzioni cinesi e delle concezioni giuridiche su cui esse si fondavano, ma anche per gli scopi pratici degli occidentali impegnati in attività di commercio sul territorio cinese. Era ormai tramontata l’epoca in cui la mediazione dei missionari gesuiti aveva prodotto rappresentazioni della Cina fortemente elogiative. Da qualche decennio l’interesse europeo stava rivolgendosi alla realtà concreta della vita politico-amministrativa e sociale dell’impero e nuove testimonianze stavano rivelando un paese ben diverso dalla civiltà oggetto della grande ammirazione di Gesuiti e Illuministi. Conoscere direttamente la lettera e la pratica delle diverse branche dell’amministrazione e in particolare della giustizia cinesi stava diventando fondamentale per tutelare gli interessi economici di occidentali ormai ben poco disposti all’ammirazione e, invece, sempre più inclini a considerare la Cina un paese tirannico, insicuro, inaffidabile, ma al tempo stesso un mercato che pareva riservare grandi promesse. Enigma Cina ripercorre le tappe fondamentali del dibattito europeo dal quale scaturirono immagini della Cina imperiale destinate a influenzare profondamente l’opinione pubblica dell’Occidente fino alla fine dell’epoca dinastica e anche successivamente.

Recensione di volume contenente ristampa di due saggi di Salvatore Rotta sulla ricezione di Montesquieu e di Voltaire in Italia

Editorial

The Paris Universal Expositions of 1867, 1889 and 1900 turned out to be such a far-reaching event that it involved the Orient itself. There were numerous illustrious Arabs and intellectuals who did not want to miss the unique opportunity of visiting these exhibitions. Many of the Arab intellectuals in question left first-hand accounts of their experience. These nineteenth-century works, which we can insert into the category of travel literature, revisit and re-enact the tradition of the riḥla (journey) according to the new needs of Arab society. Modulated according to the universal structure of the journey – departure, transit, arrival –, the texts highlight the various modes by which an encounter with the ‘other’ came about and contributed to forming the consciousness of a collective identity. The Exposition, therefore, as a destination for the Arab traveler – a traveler who, in this abstract and transient ‘place’, lives a dual experience, enraptured, on the one hand, by the phantasmagoric atmosphere of the event, and on the other, fascinated by the ephemeral aspect of the representation that it gives of his country – arouses a certain ‘effect of estrangement’ which, however, soon dissolves like the pavilions of the Exposition itself, to leave room for the dominant view which is the image that the West was constructing of the East.

The article analyses the orientalist work of Gustave Guillaumet, by means of exhibition of the world similar to that which was implemented in the great nineteenth-century exhibitions. The journalist-painter tends to construct a labyrinthine space, in which the North African reality is exhibited according to realistic aesthetic codes, but with fundamentally colonialist ideological objectives. The narration of the Great 1867 Exposition is inscribed in this view. To this, Guillaumet dedicated one of his articles originally published in the Nouvelle revue and then merged into the posthumous volume, Tableaux algériens (1888).

Roberta Gefter Wondrich Exhibitionary Forms in Ireland: James Joyce’s Exhibits of Irish Modernity The Great Exhibition of 1851 marked the beginning of a bond between capitalism, consumer culture, the emergent advertising and the imperial ideology of England that would consolidate its hold not only economically but semiotically well into the early twentieth century. Within the new ‘scopic’ sense of the Empire promoted by the International Exhibitions in the British context, the specificity of Ireland as internal colony and emancipating nation is worth considering. The 1907 Dublin International Exhibition, in spite of its success, failed to elicit a strong interest on the part of Irish artists and intellectuals, at a peak time in the history of cultural nationalism championed by the Celtic Revival movement, with the two notable exceptions of novelist Bram Stoker and, to a lesser degree, of playwright John Millington Synge. The first part of the essay considers the cultural implications of the expositions in Ireland and the 1907 Dublin Exhibition in the light of the defining trope of the core- periphery relationship. The second and main part of this study focuses on what appears to be one of the most interesting and articulate textualizations of the “exhibitionary complex” in Irish – and English – literary culture, which should rather be ascribed, it is my contention, to the work of James Joyce, notably in Dubliners and Ulysses. This applies to the distinctively Irish minor expository form of the (Orientalist) bazaar (the Araby and Mirus bazaars, respectively in Dubliners and Ulysses), the phantasmagoria of commodity culture, the ubiquity and the spectacle of the imported colonial commodities as an instance of cultural imperialism, the consumption of Orientalist images as an escapist rather than imperialist fantasy, the nexus between the ephemeral expository space and erotic degradation, the museum (“Lestrygonians”), the press and advertising (“Aeolus”), the monumentary apparatus of the city (“Wandering Rocks”), the Victorian seaside resort indirectly evoked as a sexualized space of leisure (“Nausicaa”), the pageant of colonial Ireland’s efforts of technical and scientific progress satirised in “Ithaca”, and, finally, the very idea of the modern city as exhibition.

Modern European culture and politics have been largely shaped by centuries of material and cognitive contact with domestic and exotic forms of ethno-anthropological, sociological and cultural diversity in both a spatial and temporal dimension. The need to confront and deal with ‘diversity’ stemmed in part from the process of European expansion in the world. But it also reflects the core problem of politics: how to harmonize different interests, groups, religious faiths, customs, languages and ethnic identities, blending them into some form of viable and durable co-existence. We can identify two extremes in the approach to cultural diversity: suppression through assimilation or its perpetuation through radical ‘othering’. In between there has been a wide variety of policies and intellectual or ideological constructs of a ‘transcultural’ kind, with the transfer, adaptation and dialogue of political, religious and economic patterns of relationships. This international collection of essays reviews many such cultural experiences, taking a global, transcultural outlook, ranging from European encounters with exotic peoples of newly discovered lands of conquest and colonization to the process by which the European states themselves took shape. It is the outcome of the European research project “EUO-European Culture and the Understanding of Otherness: Historiography, Politics and the Sciences of Man in the Birth of the Modern World (Sixteenth-Nineteenth Centuries)” conceived and directed by Guido Abbattista with researchers from eleven European universities, sponsored by the Italian Ministry of Education University and Research (Interlink program 2006-2008)

Recent studies on human live ethno-exhibitions have concentrated on their nineteenth-twentieth centuries forms, considering them as a typical expression of Western capitalist, imperialist and racialist culture and using for them the definition of ‘human zoos’. This essay aims to put in a longer historical perspective the phenomena of live human ethno-exhibitions, suggesting, first, to connect them to the practice of abducting exotic humans at the epoch of the discovery of the New World, and, second, to underline their relationship with the ancient “Roman triumphal culture” and its public exhibition of stranger, exotic captives as preys and trophies on the same plane as booty of other kinds. At the same time, a continuity can be envisaged between early modern practices of ethno-exhibitions of exotic living humans and present-day episodes registered by news reporting which testify how the use of reifying human beings and making of them ‘trophies’ of ideological discourses of different sort – humanitarian, conservationist, ecological – has survived in many unexpected contexts even in the twenty first century and not only in the Western World.