Nations divided : America, Italy, and the Southern question / Don H. Doyle.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Doyle, Don Harrison, 1946-

Series:

Jack N. and Addie D. Averitt lecture series ; no. 10.

Georgia Southern University. Jack N. and Addie D. Averitt lecture series ; no. 10

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Regionalism--United States--History.

Regionalism.

Nationalism--United States--History.

Nationalism.

Political culture--United States--History.

Political culture.

Regionalism--Italy--History.

Nationalism--Italy--History.

Political culture--Italy--History.

United States--Politics and government.

United States.

Southern States--History.

Southern States.

Italy--Politics and government.

Italy.

Italy, Southern--History.

Italy, Southern.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (151 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Athens, Ga : University of Georgia Press, c2002.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In Nations Divided, Don H. Doyle looks at some unexpected parallels in American and Italian history. What we learn will reattune us to the complexities and ironies of nationalism. During his travels around southern Italy not long ago, Doyle was caught off guard by frequent images of the Confederate battle flag. The flag could also be seen, he was told, waving in the stands at soccer matches. At the same time, a political movement in northern Italy called for secession from the South. A historian with a special interest in the long troubled relationship between the American South and the United States, Doyle was driven to understand the forces that unite and divide nations from within. The Italian South had been at odds with the more prosperous, metropolitan North of Italy since the country's bloody unification struggles in the 1860s. Thousands of miles from Doyle's Tennessee home was an eerily familiar scenario: a South characterized in terms of its many perceived problems by a North eager to define national ideals against the southern "other." From this abruptly decentered perspective, Doyle reexamines both countries' struggle to create an independent, unified nation and the ongoing effort to instill national identity in their diverse populace. The Fourth of July and Statuto Day; Lincoln and Garibaldi; the Confederate States of America and the secessionist dreams of Italy's Northern League; NAFTA and the European Union-such topics appear in telling juxtaposition, both inviting and defying easy conclusions. At the same time, Doyle negotiates the conceptual slipperiness of nationalism by discussing it as both constructed and real, unifying and divisive, inspiration for good and excuse for atrocity. "Americans like to think of themselves as being innocent of the vicious ethnic warfare that has raged in the Old World and over so much of the globe," writes Doyle. "Europeans, in turn, enjoy reminding Americans of how little history they have." This enlightening, challenging meditation shows us that Europeans and Americans have much to learn from the common history of nationalism that has shaped both their worlds.

Contents:

A death at Gettysburg

Making nations

The daily plebiscite

Imagined enemies

Nationalism reconsidered

Notes.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [109]-123) and index.

ISBN:

9786612799877

9781282799875

1282799878

9780820326382

0820326380

OCLC:

53956494