Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872) was one of the most important thinkers and writers of the Italian Risorgimento. In 1831, Mazzini organized the secret revolutionary society, Young Italy, devoted to the unification of Italy under republican government. He spent much of his life in France, Switzerland, and England, trying to foment revolution in Italy from abroad.
With the outbreak of revolution in 1848, he returned to become a member of the government in the Republic of Rome (1849), but went into exile the revolution failed. The Duties of Man was his most influential work; he began writing in 1844, but the entire work was not published until 1858.
As you read this selection, Chapter Five of Duties of Man, consider: why does Mazzini seem to think that a country is useful and necessary? What defines a country or a nation for him? Who is, or should be part of the nation, for him? Who (or what ideas) does he seem to be arguing against? What does he want? What seems familiar to you as you read it, and what might be new in the mid nineteenth-century or specific to Italy?
