The first part of Giuseppe Galasso’s book outlines the development of historical science in Italy between the fourth century and the early 20th century (pp. 5–12). It was published by the Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana in Appendix VIII of its encyclopedia Il contributo italiano alla storia del pensiero. The chapter does not merely focus on individual historians but also on the ways in which the political, social and economic contexts influenced the work of professional historians; on the scientific evolution of the discipline and its shift in interest; and finally on the transmission of historical knowledge throughout Italy and Europe. Following this initial approach, the analysis travels back to the medieval and modern eras, when the relationship between Italy and Europe was particularly important for Italian historians. The professionalisation of Italian historians in this period was thus strictly linked to different intellectual networks. Therefore, this section of the book focuses on changes in the historical field, but also on how history became codified and legitimated in Italy through rigorous scientific research. Within this very broad context, Galasso concentrates his attention on the creation of a common culture amongst Italian historians throughout the centuries, which played a crucial part in building an idea of Italy as a nation. In order to develop all of these topics, Galasso necessarily had to investigate the mechanisms of selection of scientific knowledge and the features of the profession over a longue durée and from a ʻnational’ perspective. Through a multifaceted investigation of different historiographies at a national, local and regional level and, occasionally also on the European plane, the first part clarifies the evolution, the continuities and the fractures of historiography in the Italian peninsula.
The second part of the volume turns its attention to the relationships between research institutions and the professionalisation of historians, from the interwar period onwards (pp. 117–236). The analysis is centred on the interaction between the historian’s profession and the political context, before and during Fascism, as well as on the interrelations between the scientific community and the codification of the historical field, after the end of the Second World War. It is interesting to note that as early as the late 1940s and the 1950s, historians questioned their own mission as public educators, beyond the portals of the profession. Italian as well as European debates were not centred solely on which sources and methods could conceptualise, contextualise and historicise the pasts, but also whether professional historians should provide a historical understanding of current trends, since history – and in particular contemporary history – often served postwar states’ political projects to foster democracy. This approach was highly effective in training men and women capable of understanding the world in which they lived. As Galasso underlines with the ideological polarisation of the Cold War and the rise of nationalist movements in former overseas domains, it is made clear that Europe was no longer the global leader and this, in his words, ʻwas not always positive’ (p. 232). The period between the 1970s and the 1980s witnessed the overlap between the coming of age of the first ‘postwar’ generation of historians and the passing of the last ‘prewar’ generation of their masters: each of these ʻgenerations’, as Galasso underlines, were united by common experiences rather than by age. The student movements and the increased access to higher education broadened the generation gap and increased the demand to study history from new perspectives. More generally, the chapter investigates how the education of new generations was at the core of the political and cultural agenda of several leading Italian historians at least until the mid-1980s. Galasso emphasises that the analysis of common discussions among Italian historians can help reveal how many, as researchers and teachers, felt it their duty to perform civic education in Italian society by renewing both the research methods and the history-teaching modes. For many of them, civic education had a crucial importance in their scientific production and personal biographies and was linked to the idea of history as a scientific and social commitment.
The results of Galasso’s many inquiries into Italian historians and, more generally, his studies on European historiography, formed the background for this book: from Nient’altro che storia. Saggi di teoria e metodologia della storia published in 2000, to Storici italiani del Novecento published in 2008 and Storiografia e storici europei del Novecento published in 2016. In his current work, the author uses two main levels of analysis to interpret historical studies in Italy during the period under study: the first attempts to identify the relation between individual historical research and political and social organisation in Italy; the second focuses on the importance of the modus operandi of historians. Overall, this is a significant book which offers a practical and theoretical guide to many aspects of Italian historiography, analysing its capacities for communication and mediation and investigating the transmission of knowledge between different generations of historians. In his last pages, Galasso attempts to face an important question: what is history’s role in society today? He believes that history should still have a key role in Italian schools and thus in society: for this reason, historians should fight to defend it, because in doing so, they defend democracy by helping young generations to build freedom of conscience and ideas. He asserts in conclusion that studying history means fostering innovation by encouraging today’s youth to think analytically (p. 221).
