I.

Introduction

Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872), Italian revolutionary, political theorist, and advocate of Italian unification.

Mazzini was born in Genoa on June 22, 1805, the son of a doctor, and studied law at the University of Genoa. He bitterly resented the absorption of his native republic of Genoa into the kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont in 1815. In 1827 he joined the revolutionary Carbonari society, but after his imprisonment at Savona (1830-1831) he abandoned that organization as ineffective. Exiled, he founded the Young Italy (Giovine Italia) Society in Marseille, France, in July 1831. It established branches in many Italian cities. Mazzini argued that through coordinated uprisings, the people could drive the Italian princes from their thrones and oust the Austrians from dominance of the Italian Peninsula.