Carbonari

Carbonari (Italian for “charcoal burners”), early 19th-century secret revolutionary society formed in Naples, Italy, during the reign of Joachim Murat, king of Naples (1808-1815). It was later active in France and the Iberian Peninsula. The Carbonari advocated political freedom and a constitutional style of government. The members, mostly from the middle and upper classes, were organized in a hierarchy of lodges in two parallel structures, one in the civil population and the other in the armed forces.

The Carbonari led an unsuccessful uprising in Naples in 1820 during the struggle for Italian unification. Similar revolts also took place in Spain and Portugal (1820), Piedmont (1821), Romagna and Parma (1831), all of which were suppressed. Meanwhile the Carbonari participated in the French revolution of 1830, after which most French Carbonari supported the government of Louis Philippe, king of France (1830-1848). About 1831 Giuseppe Mazzini, an active member of the Carbonari, founded a new secret society called Young Italy. This group absorbed most of the membership of the Carbonari, which then ceased to be effective.