52 Facts About Giuseppe Mazzini

Giuseppe Mazzini was an Italian politician, journalist, and activist for the unification of Italy and spearhead of the Italian revolutionary movement.

Giuseppe Mazzini's efforts helped bring about the independent and unified Italy in place of the several separate states, many dominated by foreign powers, that existed until the 19th century.

An Italian nationalist in the historical radical tradition and a proponent of a republicanism of social-democratic inspiration, Mazzini helped define the modern European movement for popular democracy in a republican state.

Giuseppe Mazzini's thoughts had a very considerable influence on the Italian and European republican movements, in the Constitution of Italy, about Europeanism and more nuanced on many politicians of a later period, among them American president Woodrow Wilson and British prime minister David Lloyd George as well as post-colonial leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Veer Savarkar, Golda Meir, David Ben-Gurion, Kwame Nkrumah, Jawaharlal Nehru and Sun Yat-sen.

Giuseppe Mazzini was born in Genoa, then part of the Ligurian Republic.

Giuseppe Mazzini's father Giacomo Mazzini, originally from Chiavari, was a university professor who had adhered to Jacobin ideology while his mother Maria Drago was renowned for her beauty and religious Jansenist fervour.

From a very early age, Giuseppe Mazzini showed good learning qualities as well as a precocious interest in politics and literature.

Giuseppe Mazzini was admitted to university at 14, graduating in law in 1826 and initially practised as a "poor man's lawyer".

Giuseppe Mazzini hoped to become a historical novelist or a dramatist and in the same year wrote his first essay, Dell'amor patrio di Dante, published in 1827.

Giuseppe Mazzini then became one of the leading authors of L'Indicatore Livornese, published at Livorno by Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi, until this paper was closed down by the authorities.

In 1827, Giuseppe Mazzini travelled to Tuscany, where he became a member of the Carbonari, a secret association with political purposes.

In 1831, Giuseppe Mazzini went to Marseille, where he became a popular figure among the Italian exiles.

Giuseppe Mazzini was a frequent visitor to the apartment of Giuditta Bellerio Sidoli, a Modenese widow who became his lover.

The Olliviers took care of the child in June 1833 when Giuditta and Giuseppe Mazzini left for Switzerland.

In that year Giuseppe Mazzini first attempted insurrection, which would spread from Chambery, Alessandria, Turin, and Genoa.

Giuseppe Mazzini's intention was nothing less than to overturn the European settlement agreed in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna, which had reestablished an oppressive hegemony of a few great powers and blocked the emergence of smaller nations.

Giuseppe Mazzini hoped, but without much confidence, that his vision of a league or society of independent nations would be realized in his own lifetime.

On 28 May 1834, Giuseppe Mazzini was arrested at Solothurn, and exiled from Switzerland.

Giuseppe Mazzini was released only after promising he would move to England.

On 30 April 1840, Giuseppe Mazzini reformed the Giovine Italia in London, and on 10 November of the same year he began issuing the Apostolato popolare.

Giuseppe Mazzini was abandoned by Sidoli, who had returned to Italy to rejoin her children.

Giuseppe Mazzini created an Italian school for poor people active from 10 November 1841 at 5 Greville Street, London.

Giuseppe Mazzini accused the British government of having passed information about the expeditions to the Neapolitans, and the question was raised in the British Parliament.

When it was admitted that his private letters had indeed been opened, and its contents revealed by the Foreign Office to the Austrian and Neapolitan governments, Giuseppe Mazzini gained popularity and support among the British liberals, who were outraged by such a blatant intrusion of the government into his private correspondence.

On 7 April 1848, Giuseppe Mazzini reached Milan, whose population had rebelled against the Austrian garrison and established a provisional government.

Giuseppe Mazzini, who had never been popular in the city because he wanted Lombardy to become a republic instead of joining Piedmont, abandoned Milan.

Giuseppe Mazzini joined Garibaldi's irregular force at Bergamo, moving to Switzerland with him.

Giuseppe Mazzini was one of the founders and leaders of the Action Party, the first organized party in the history of Italy.

On 12 July 1849, Giuseppe Mazzini set out for Marseille, from where he moved again to Switzerland.

Giuseppe Mazzini spent all of 1850 hiding from the Swiss police.

Giuseppe Mazzini later opposed the alliance signed by Savoy with Austria for the Crimean War.

Giuseppe Mazzini managed to escape the police but was condemned to death by default.

From this moment on, Giuseppe Mazzini was more of a spectator than a protagonist of the Italian Risorgimento, whose reins were now strongly in the hands of the Savoyard monarch Victor Emmanuel II and his skilled prime minister, Camillo Benso, Conte di Cavour.

In 1862, Giuseppe Mazzini joined Garibaldi in his failed attempt to free Rome.

Giuseppe Mazzini's funeral was held in Genoa, with 100,000 people taking part in it.

An Italian nationalist, Giuseppe Mazzini was a fervent advocate of republicanism and envisioned a united, free and independent Italy.

Unlike his contemporary Giuseppe Garibaldi, who was a republican, Mazzini refused to swear an oath of allegiance to the House of Savoy until after the Capture of Rome.

In 1871, Giuseppe Mazzini condemned the radical, anti-religious and revolutionary socialist revolt in France that led to the creation of the short-lived Paris Commune.

Giuseppe Mazzini came out entirely in favour of the Paris Commune and internationalism, and his stance brought him much closer to the younger radicals,.

Giuseppe Mazzini rejected the Marxist doctrines of class struggle and materialism, stressing the need for class collaboration.

Giuseppe Mazzini did a great deal to organize and united this underground movement, known under the name of "Young Italy".

Giuseppe Mazzini conceived the idea of parallel organizations in other European countries, which should all of them join in a "Young Europe" movement.

Ordinary democrats of the Giuseppe Mazzini type were no longer persecuted in France after 1830.

Giuseppe Mazzini's Socialism was alive with moral purpose, rather than class identity, infused with exalted intent and specifically inspired by a sense of national, rather than class, mission.

Giuseppe Mazzini rejected the concept of the "rights of man" which had developed during the Age of Enlightenment, arguing instead that individual rights were a duty to be won through hard work, sacrifice and virtue rather than "rights" which were intrinsically owed to man.

Giuseppe Mazzini outlined his thought in his Doveri dell'uomo, published in 1860.

Similarly, Giuseppe Mazzini formulated a concept known as "thought and action" in which thought and action must be joined together and every thought must be followed by action, therefore rejecting intellectualism and the notion of divorcing theory from practice.

In "Duties of Man", Giuseppe Mazzini called for recognition of women's rights.

Giuseppe Mazzini called for the end of women's social and judicial subordination to men.

Giuseppe Mazzini helped intellectuals see women's rights not merely as a peripheral topic, but rather as a fundamental goal necessary for the regeneration of old nations and the rebirth of new ones.

The antifascist Giuseppe Mazzini Society, founded in the United States in 1939 by Italian political refugees, took his name and served Italy from exile, as he had.

In London, Giuseppe Mazzini resided at 155 North Gower Street, near Euston Square, which is marked with a commemorative blue plaque.