The Flashing Chimes of Freedom. The American Jacobinism of Luigi Angeloni

Abstract

During the Revolutionary Triennium the debate concerning the most suitable form of government to be preferred for the Italian nation unfolded in a very articulated fashion. If strong was the party of those who favored an unitarian solution, equally vocal were those who considered a federalist system the only capable to deal with the social fragmentation characterizing the peninsula. Luigi Angeloni (1759-1836), a Jacobin who had taken part in the events of the Repubblica Romana, cultivated a great interest in the development of the American political experience. From his exile in Paris, in the aftermath of the fall of Napoleon Angeloni published the pamphlet Sopra l’ordinamento che aver dovrebbono i governi d’Italia where he pointed out how American federalism was the institutional mechanism to be pursued in order to achieve a veritable independence for Italy. In his following work Dell’Italia uscente il settembre del 1818 Angeloni, deeply disappointed by the decisions taken in Vienna, renewed his appeal for the adoption of a federal system, in his view the only capable to guarantee unity and to avoid the danger of foreign interferences in the country. After moving to London in 1823, Angeloni expanded his political analysis of the Italian situation in a two-volume work Della forza nelle cose politiche upholding his preference for a democracy based on popular sovereignty – «reggersi uno stato a popolo» – and his admiration for «il libero e bel governo degli Stati Uniti Americani» and for the federalist doctrine.