Transnational Patriotism in the Mediterranean, 1800-1850

Stammering the Nation

Konstantina Zanou

Explores the different traditions and conjunctures between the Mediterranean, northern Europe, the Ottoman world, and the Russian Empire
Proposes a new and exciting way of writing history through individual biographies and microhistories
Explores notions of nationhood, empire, and the creation of national consciousness
Emphasizes the important role Russo-Mediterranean and Orthodox Christianity played in the Modern Greek Enlightenment
Shakes many of the pillars of our understanding of nationalism, by approaching the creation of national consciousness as a transnational and diasporic phenomenon
Explores the initial stages of the creation of the Italian and Greek national languages and literatures as intrinsically interconnected

Transnational Patriotism in the Mediterranean, 1800-1850

Stammering the Nation

Konstantina Zanou

Description

Transnational Patriotism in the Mediterranean investigates the long process of transition from a world of empires to a world of nation-states by narrating the biographies of a group of people who were born within empires but came of age surrounded by the emerging vocabulary of nationalism, much of which they themselves created.

It is the story of a generation of intellectuals and political thinkers from the Ionian Islands who experienced the collapse of the Republic of Venice and the dissolution of the common cultural and political space of the Adriatic, and who contributed to the creation of Italian and Greek nationalisms. By uncovering this forgotten intellectual universe, Transnational Patriotism in the Mediterranean retrieves a world characterized by multiple cultural, intellectual, and political affiliations that have since been buried by the conventional narrative of the formation of nation-states.

Transnational Patriotism in the Mediterranean rethinks the origins of Italian and Greek nationalisms and states, highlighting the intellectual connection between the Italian peninsula, Greece, and Russia, and reestablishing the lost link between the changing geopolitical contexts of western Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Balkans in the Age of Revolutions. It re-inscribes important intellectuals and political figures, considered "national fathers" of Italy and Greece (such as Ugo Foscolo, Dionysios Solomos, Ioannis Kapodistrias and Niccolò Tommaseo), into their regional and multicultural context, and shows how nations emerged from an intermingling, rather than a clash, of ideas concerning empire and liberalism, Enlightenment and religion, revolution and conservatism, and East and West.

Transnational Patriotism in the Mediterranean, 1800-1850

Stammering the Nation

Konstantina Zanou

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Note on Transliteration
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Part I: One Island, Three (Trans)National Poets
1. Ugo Foscolo: A Life of Stammering in Exile
2. The Staggering of Andreas Kalvos
3. Dionysios Solomos: A Life in Translation
Part II: Imperial Nationalism between Religion and Revolution
4. The Russian Adriatic
5. Diasporic Lives Across Empires and Nations
6. Conservative Liberalism and Pan-Christian Utopianism in Post-Napoleonic Europe
7. The Greek Revolution through the eyes of Orthodox Enlightenment
Part III: Memoirs of Lives Suspended Between Patrias
8. A Life in Absence: Mario Pieri
9. Andrea Papadopoulo Vretto between East and West
Part IV: Intellectuals as 'Bridges' across the Sea
10. An Unknown 'Miracle': Andrea Mustoxidi
11. The Greco- and Dalmato-Venetian Intellectuals After the End of the Serenissima
12. A Trans-Adriatic Programme for the Regeneration of Greek Letters
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index

Transnational Patriotism in the Mediterranean, 1800-1850

Stammering the Nation

Konstantina Zanou

Author Information

Konstantina Zanou is Assistant Professor of Italian, specializing in Mediterranean Studies, in the Italian Department at Columbia University. She is a historian of the long nineteenth century in the Mediterranean. Her research focuses on issues of intellectual and literary history, biography, and microhistory, with a special emphasis on Italy (the Risorgimento), the Venetian Republic, the Ottoman world, Greece, the Ionian Islands, and Russia. She is also a student of modern diasporas and of the trajectories and ideas of people on the move. She has co-edited (with Maurizio Isabella) the volume Mediterranean Diasporas: Politics and Ideas in the Long Nineteenth Century (2016).

Transnational Patriotism in the Mediterranean, 1800-1850

Stammering the Nation

Konstantina Zanou

Reviews and Awards

Winner of the 2020 Mediterranean Seminar Best Book Prize
Winner of the Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prize of the Society for Italian Historical Studies
Winner of the 2019 Edmund Keely Book Prize

"This book breaks new ground between transnational intellectual history, biography and cultural history and even suggests -- rather unassumingly -- a different way of writing history; it is bound to travel well and will accompany many who delve into the history of the Adriatic Sea" -- Sakis Gekas, H-Soz-u-Kult

"To say that this book makes significant contributions to a number of historiographical themes is probably an understatement...a book that has transgressed a number of scholarly boundaries and that has already become a reference book for the history of the region. This work is useful not just for specialists in the field (and for relevant university courses), but also for all those who want to enhance their knowledge of modern Europe, and of the processes through which the modern world emerged." -- Dr. Michalis Sotiropoulos, University of Athens, Reviews in History

"Konstantina Zanou's brilliant text offers pleasurable reading thanks to the concreteness and vividness of the narration. The biographical portraits include personal traits, sad and funny twists and the passions and intimate moments of discomfort of the heroes...the author narrates their lives based on a rigorous scholarly selection of sources that includes forgotten writings and documents from eleven archives in Greece, Italy, France and Switzerland...a pioneering contribution to our general understanding of early Mediterranean and European liberalism, patriotism and nation-building; it is also a refreshing methodological renovation of the way to approach history." -- Rolf Petri, Ca' Foscari University of Venice, History: The Journal of the Historical Association