Die geistigen Grundlagen des Risorgimento

The history of the Italians' sense of national unity began several centuries prior to the efforts to implement a concrete realization of this national unity on a political level. Through the vehicle of language, Dante had already created the foundation for a cultural sense of unity. Expressions pregnant with patriotic passion were to be found as early as Petrarch, and later with Machiavelli and Guicciardini. But, as much as the Italy of the Renaissance period was aware of its cultural preem...