Tea at Trianon: The Risorgimento Myth

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, October 8, 2025

The Risorgimento Myth

From Engelsburg Ideas:

Historical ‘black legends’ are tenacious libels: they may influence perceptions of social groups, cultures or entire nations, centuries after the original misrepresentation was perpetrated. The enduring distrust of Catholics in England, still constitutionally embedded in the royal succession law and originating in the propaganda of Sir Francis Walsingham under Elizabeth I, is just one example.
There is, however, a far more potent instance of historical demonisation that, to this day, distorts the perception of a major European nation and influences the interaction of such contemporary bodies as the IMF and the World Bank with its government and economy. Italy is a unique instance of the extreme distortion of cultural heritage and economic history, due to the persistence of a black legend deployed for cynical political purposes in the mid-19th century, and still widely accepted today. Britain no longer subscribes to the self-validating Whig Interpretation of History; but Italy, at official level and in widespread public attitudes, clings to an equivalent mythology, dating from and designed to legitimise the Risorgimento.
The image of modern Italy is of a country driven economically by its prosperous northern regions – industrial, productive, modern and home to globally famous fashion houses – contrasted with the South, regarded as impoverished, agrarian and backward, despite a cultural heritage of great beauty and antiquity. It is the constant complaint of the more militant northern politicians, such as those belonging to the Lega Nord, that the South is a burden to the developed North, which has grown tired of subsidising Italy’s less enterprising regions.
This narrative is not, in the present day, false. It is borne out by the economic realities of Italy’s divided heritage. The World Bank has identified significant problems in the ‘Mezzogiorno’, as southern Italy is known, including high unemployment, low productivity, inadequate infrastructure and organised crime. The bank has highlighted regional disparities, with the North having a higher percentage of its workforce employed in industry and transportation, while the South has a greater proportion employed in agriculture, reflecting a surplus agrarian population. (Read more.)