ABSTRACT
The events of 1831 in Italy involved a set of separate movements rather than the single nationalistic uprising denounced by traditionalist historians of left and right. The image they have established is of a pathetic affair, stimulated by secret societies, and led by effete old gentlemen who preferred particularism to patriotism and, therefore, betrayed the Risorgimento. In fact, as the emphasis on their regional nature shows, the movements of 1831 were not truly national at all. Nor were they really due to clandestine conspiracy. Basically, they were more or less open attempts to profit from circumstances to replace regimes which were more incompetent than oppressive by something closer to the semi-participatory political systems of the French era. The response to the maladministration of the 1820s was to seek to return to idealised, and scaled-down, versions of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy. Had real oppression been the target, then it is likely that revolutions would have broken out elsewhere than in the small states of what is now Emilia-Romagna, most of which had been under French control in one form or another for longer than other parts of Italy. And, although traditional historiography accords pride of place to Modena in the events of 1831, the reality is that Bologna and the Papal Legations – so called because they were ruled by cardinal-legates rather than by lesser ecclesiastical luminaries – were the real epicentres of opposition. General maladministration was aggravated in the latter areas by the fact that virtually all administration was in the hands of the clergy.
