ABSTRACT
This chapter treats the political and cultural milieu of Napoleonic Italy in which the quest for the ‘first Italians’ arose. In particular, it examines how the debate over the best form of government led to a variety of ethnogenetic theses concerning the origins of the Italians. Among them stood out the theory proposed by the unitary intellectual and revolutionary Vincenzo Cuoco (1770–1823), who argued for the ethnic homogeneity of modern Italians as the result of the prehistoric settlement of one ‘superior’ race: the Pelasgians. Although Cuoco never referred to the natural history of man, his understanding of terms like ‘race,’ ‘stock,’ and ‘lineage’ conveyed the inheritability of cultural, moral, and physical traits.
