It would be easy to dismiss the group of ‘mazziniane’ – the focus of this monograph – as a ‘minority within a minority’: this may well be the reason why, as Marinucci argues, this group of women has been largely overlooked by historians. Yet this would be a mistake. By collating documents from an array of Italian archives, Marinucci has succeeded in tracing the gendered universe of Mazzini's followers, showing how women played a pivotal role in the pursuit of the political project of a united, republican Italy. As Marinucci convincingly argues, unearthing this forgotten chapter in the history of Italian women helps us to get to the roots of the history of women's emancipation in Italy too.
The small circle of women who gathered around Mazzini during his long English exile has been the focus of previous studies (Isastia, Pesman). This book, however, substantially enriches the historiography due to its ambition not only to identify a broader movement of Mazzinian women but also to trace the movement's ‘long’ intergenerational history from Risorgimento protagonists to antifascist republicans. As the title reveals, the book is about the many ‘histories’ of the movement, as distinctions are made between more moderate interpretations (‘mazzinianesimo femminile’, religious and ‘intransigent’) and more radical interpretations (‘femminismo mazziniano’, secular and libertarian), not to mention clear regional differences.
The structure of the book includes a first theoretical chapter on Mazzini's writings in support of women's emancipation, followed by three chapters where women Mazzinians are grouped according to the terminology of ‘family’. Chapter Two is devoted to the older generation (‘le madri’), including not only Mazzini's mother, Maria Drago, but also Eleonora Ruffini (mother to the Ruffini brothers). Chapter Three embraces Mazzini's contemporaries (‘le sorelle’), including, amongst many, Mazzini's long-standing love, Giuditta Sidoli, and others such as Carlotta Benettini, Giulia Pezzi and Elena Casati Sacchi. Chapter Four includes the following generation (‘le figlie’), from Annamaria Mozzoni (a restless Mazzinian (‘irrequieta’) to Adelaide Tondi Albani (‘intransigente’) and later republicans.
Marinucci's aim to shine a light on this motley group of women, whose activism contributed to shaping Italy's national history, is to be commended: not only does the author bring to the fore women's part in building barricades, fundraising, hiding conspirators, acting as spies, establishing networks, promoting associations and educating women and girls across class boundaries, but he shows how Mazzinian women were often defined by their resolute resilience. We are reminded of women like Elena Montecchi Torti, who, in the aftermath of the defeat of the Roman Republic, remained defiant in the face of the restoration; or like the working-class Turin seamstress Maria Mussa Ferraris, who actively disseminated Mazzini's ideas amongst fellow women workers well into the 1870s. The theme of self-improving, autodidact Italian women is particularly enlightening, as it adds a new, layered dimension to a gendered landscape of nineteenth-century Italy more often defined by female illiteracy and lack of education. The cross-class element is arguably one of the highlights of the book: we learn about the Genoese Carlotta Benettini, ‘la mazziniana del popolo’, whom Mazzini was keen to involve due to her ability to reach working-class women. Genoa was the early epicentre of Mazzinian female activism, thanks to Mazzini's mother, Maria Drago, who opened her home to numerous female sympathisers of the Giovine Italia, including Fanny Balby, Laura Di Negro, Nina Cambiaso, Bice Pareto and Fanny Spinola.
The chapter on the second generation of Italian Mazzinians goes some way towards unravelling the developments of the movement amongst the later female followers; Mozzoni's commitment to the cause of votes for women explains her distancing from the body of intransigent republicans who refused to enter the political arena and engage in the parliamentary process in defiance of Italy's monarchical institutions. In foreign affairs, the Mazzinian network helped galvanise anti-imperialist women, who condemned Italy's expansionist ambitions and, as late as 1907, supported Albania's liberation movement against the yoke of the Ottoman Empire. Divisions arose between Mazzini's women followers in the run-up to the First World War as the fault line between pacifists and interventionists was exposed. After the war, women such as Adelaide Albani and pacifist and Europeanist Rosalia Adami Gwis had to face up to the challenges from the Marxist-Leninist attacks on one side, and the fascist takeover and appropriation of Mazzini's legacy, on the other.
Mazzinian followers would later be found in the ranks of antifascist, republican women who fought fascism at home and abroad, by supporting the Republic during the Spanish Civil War. More could have been made of the ‘passing of the baton’ between a Mazzinian mother and a Communist daughter: the reader is left wondering whether this generational shift in political allegiance is more than the result of personal choice, and rather the symptom of a wider movement amongst Italian women who transitioned from Mazzinian activism to Communist militancy. The book closes abruptly, with no concluding chapter: it is unclear whether the whole of the next generation was indeed absorbed within the Communist ranks, where it would be sidelined and rendered invisible by the ruthlessly male-dominated PCI apparatus.
Finally, Marinucci's book also falls short of engaging convincingly with the transnational element, which permeated so much of Mazzini's female following. While reference is made to the ‘Mazzinian Church’ which included followers such as Jessie White Mario, Sara Nathan, Georgina Craufurd Saffi and Emilie Ashurst Venturi, profoundly influenced by the Protestant ethic, there is no sense of a greater female transnational movement, which went beyond personal friendships and generations. The oversight is no doubt also due to the fact that Marinucci does not engage with much of the international scholarship which has seen a plethora of women historians focus on the subject under analysis, with the aim of formulating an ‘integrated history’ of transnational women.
