1. On this confrontation, see M. Isnenghi, ‘I passati risorgono. Memorie irriconciliate dell’unificazione nazionale’, in A. Del Boca (ed.), La storia negata. Il revisionismo e il suo usopolitico (Vicenza, 2009), 39–68; and S. Patriarca, ‘Unmaking the Nation? Use and Abuses of Garibaldi in Contemporary Italy,’ Modern Italy 15, 4 (2010), 467–83. For the official celebrations, see
http://www.italiaunita150.it
/home.aspx (accessed 29 May 2011).
2. For an historical and critical overview of the historiography: L. Riall, Risorgimento. The History of Italy from Napoleon to Nation-State (London, 2009). See also the observations of A. M. Banti, Il Risorgimento italiano (Rome and Bari, 2004), 133–45 and S. Patriarca, ‘Indolence and Regeneration: Tropes and Tensions of Risorgimento Patriotism,’ The American Historical Review, 110, 2 (2005), 380–408.
3. B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, (London, 2nd edn. 1991 [orig. ed. 1983]); E. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism. Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge, 1990); R. Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge, MA, 1992).
4. See L. Riall and A. Körner, ‘Introduction: the New History of Risorgimento Nationalism,’ Nations and Nationalism 15, 3 (2009), 396–401. This section also develops some of the critical observations in the debates published in Storica 38 (2007) (‘Leggere la nuova storia del Risorgimento: una visione dall’esterno. Una discussione con Alberto Banti,’ with essays by C. Brice, M. Isabella, A. Körner, and L. Riall) and in Nations and Nationalism 15, 3 (2009) (with the same authors and an additional essay by D. Laven). See also the interventions by D. Maldito Chiarini and P. Macry in Passato e Presente 26 (2008), 17–32, entitled ‘Le emozioni del Risorgimento,’ (ed. S. Soldani); and the contributions of G. Albergoni, ‘Sulla ‘nuova storia’ del Risorgimento: note per una discussione’ and L. Mannori, ‘Il Risorgimento tra ‘nuova’ e ‘vecchia’ storia: note in margine ad un libro recente,’ Società e storia 120 (2008), 349–379.
5. On this concept see J. A. Davis, ‘Rethinking the Risorgimento?’ in N. Bouchard (ed.), Risorgimento in Modern Italian Culture. Revisiting the Nineteenth-Century Past in History, Narrative and Cinema (Madison-Teaneck, 2005), 31–32.