Storia d'europa

Benché si tratti di una sintesi troppo "sintesi",  può essere uno strumento utile a chi "per domani" deve riguardarsi quei duemila anni di storia o, dare un'occhiata veloce all'evoluzione cronologica magari a supporto di uno studio particolare da inquadrare all'interno dei grandi eventi, qui elencati, in maniera molto schematica e semplicistica. Certo, solo uno sguardo "a volo d'uccello".

My paper focuses on the peculiar ‘Idea of Europe’ investigated and developed by the historian Federico Chabod (1901-1960). Chabod was one of the most influential Italian scholars of the XX century, pupil of Gaetano Salvemini in Turin and of Friederich Meinecke in Berlin. He fought in the antifascist resistance within the Partito d’Azione, was then President of the Valle d’Aosta region, and director of Benedetto Croce’s Istituto Italiano di Studi Storici in Naples. He first focused on the History of the idea of Europe during the course that he held at the University of Milan in the troubled 1943-44 academic year. Significantly, while the city was occupied by Nazi military forces, Chabod choose to focus his attention on Europe and on the History of the idea of nation. Both fields of investigation will later become subjects of a book, where the issue of European history is described as «something that I particularly care about», a «historiographical problem strictly bound to the problems of our time». Europe’s narrative pushes Chabod, whose research methods were previously tied to institutional and diplomatic sources, towards an intellectual interpretation of the subject. The question that drives Chabod’s research is: «when did the name Europa begin to mean not just a geographical issue, but a also an historical one?». According to Chabod, the answer to this question is what differentiates the idea of nation from that of Europe: whereas a nation can be defined both on a «naturalistic» or «voluntary» background, Europe is the product of a cultural process founded on «moral solidarity and spiritual connection». My paper eventually underlines how this vision was deeply involved in the post-war attempt to get rid of brutal nationalisms, but can not avoid the danger of stating a moral superiority of European culture.

The essay discusses how Italian historian and politician, Gaetano Salvemini conceived international liberalism (i.e. wilsonian idealism) during the First World War, when Salvemini was director of the journal «Unità». From the pages of the journal Salvemini promoted the idea of a peaceful resolution of international conflicts, and supported the liberal paradigm that linked the development of national and international democratic institutions to the consolidation of world peace. The core of the essay is on Salvemini's attempt to influence the Italian public debate by comparing it to the similar efforts promoted by wilsonian liberals in Great Britain. The comparison reveals however a significant difference. While Salvemini and «L'Unità» believed that the War was indeed destined «to end all wars», British counterparts were more critical of the severe civil rights restrictions implemented after the entry of the United States in the war. Salvemini and British liberals both actively promoted a propagandistic effort in support of the project to create a League of Nations, believing that a democratic international organization, led by established democracies, could prevent internaitonal crises from escalating into full-fledged conflicts. However, Salvemini found himself isolated among Italian intellectuals and politicians. His effort failed, a broad support to a liberal and democratic international postwar order never materialized in Italy, and the legacy and memory of the Great Wor became property of the Fascists and the ultra-Right.