Italian Risorgimento and the European Volunteers

Abstract

The Risorgimento was a complex phenomenon, not only an Italian one, that had broad resonance throughout Europe since the "rise of non-historical nations" spread particularly in central and eastern part of the continent. In 1815 the Congress of Vienna worked to restore the status quo in order to set aside the Napoleonic experience. The anachronism of the measures was already highlighted just five years later when many uprisings erupted in Europe, and especially with the “national” revolutions of 1848-1849, when Poles, Hungarians, Croats, Serbs, Czechs, Italians, Bulgarians shared the principles of freedom and joined the slogan: "For your freedom and ours" was the slogan that brawny European volunteers in the continental Risorgimento confirming an irreversible crisis of the multinational empires.

DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2013.v2n1p87