Two reviews of a book by Lucy Riall on Garibaldi suggest that Riall’s important contribution to the existing literature on Garibaldi, the Risorgimento, and Italian Unification is the way that she shows how effective Garibaldi was at creating his own heroic image.

John Dickie writes:

Lucy Riall’s approach is sober and succinct. She lets the drama of episodes such as the defence of the doomed Roman Republic in 1849 and the expedition of the Thousand in 1860 speak for itself. Garibaldi is shown to be a military leader of genius, and a sincere and audacious patriot. Those who met him were charmed by his physical presence and by his humble but easy manner. Women threw themselves at his feet, and he had no compunction about taking advantage.

But he was also - and here lies the originality of Riall’s book - an astute and astoundingly successful manager of his own image. Garibaldi really was a hero; Riall’s persuasive case is that he was acting out a heroic script.

The Garibaldi persona had several components. Part was chivalrous outlaw, part long-haired romantic genius and part the honour-bound avenger of melodrama. There was more than a touch of the gaucho, too: Garibaldi’s signature poncho and his relaxed horsemanship dated back to his adventure-filled exile in South America.

Then there was religion: he appeared to be the Italian redeemer willing to sacrifice himself to free the nation from subjection. Garibaldi’s speeches played skilfully on these traits, which were more than just matters of style. The expanding press were greedy for stories that converted politics into parables of good against evil.

According to Riall, the real way that Garibaldi made Italy into a nation was not only through force and political efforts but through the creation of patriotic stories that “not only made Italy, but made Italy convincing.”

The complete review by John Dickie in The Daily Telegraph: “Spent bullets and stained bandages”

The other review, by Adam Zamoyski, makes a slightly different point about the creation of the national myth.

There never was a glorious coming together of the ‘nation’ to throw off the shackles of foreign oppression. Unification was the result of an often tawdry interplay of the competing schemes of various intellectuals and revolutionaries on the one hand and the opportunistic manoeuvring of the house of Savoy on the other, helped along by the brutality of the Habsburg administration, the incompetence of the Bourbons of Naples, the anachronism of the Papal States and the often delusional support of British public opinion.

All of this deconstruction leaves the void of explaining exactly how Italian Unification took place. Raill, according to Zamoyski, tackles this question and answers it in terms of public relations.

In this impressively researched, authoritative, intelligent and thoughtful book Lucy Riall sets out to get to the bottom of how and by whom Garibaldi’s image was constructed and, by extension, how the whole Risorgimento myth was foisted on a gullible world.

She identifies Italian Romanticism and its most famous product, Giuseppe Mazzini, as the source. A ground-breaker in terms of political PR, Mazzini deployed the power of Romantic literature to conjure the image of a nation oppressed, and used the tragic tussles of young Italian intellectuals with the ham-fisted and brutal rulers of their country to build this image into a cause. From his exile in London, where he came to rest in the 1830s, he orchestrated pointless risings which he would then write up in legendary manner.

Zamoyski emphasizes how much the creation of nationalist myth was tied to the changing role of the press in European society during the 19th century. This contingent and mutually constitutive relationship is the driving force that propelled the successful development of myth.

The press was just then undergoing a revolutionary change of its own. As readership expanded to embrace less educated classes, politics and history were increasingly represented as living theatre, which required heroes and villains. Garibaldi was a godsend in the circumstances, and he was delivered to an eager public as the physical embodiment of the resurgent Italian nation (which still did not exist in the consciousness of 90-plus per cent of the peninsula’s population).

The legend of Garibaldi developed a life of its own. While he went back to shipping guano across the Pacific, publicists and journalists churned out ever more intimate and sensational material on him. By the time he entered the fray on behalf of Italy once more, in the war of 1859-60, history unfurling had become a spectator sport for the literate masses. Garibaldi played out his part in the full glare of publicity, and his picaresque Sicilian expedition was one of the most publicised, and misrepresented, episodes in European history.

Despite the fact that all his subsequent endeavours were embarrassing failures, the propaganda needs of the Italian cause turned him into a kind of saint, and a bizarre iconography sprang up based on Christian practice and prayers. The legend had taken over from reality.

The idea of legend taking over from reality because of the interplay between the press, the subject, and the story is not a new or a unique theme. It is an important one because it appears not just in isolated cases, but in many different contexts around the modern world. One of my favorite films, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, makes the same point in the American West.

The complete review by Adam Zamoyski in The Daily Telegraph: “The hero of italian unification?”