ABSTRACT
In the activities of the Italian enlightened reformers of the eighteenth century history and reform, the study of the past and the desire to modify the present, often intertwined. Their influence upon each other, and the interaction between the two, contributed in no small way to the formation of the particular intellectual climate of the time. The connection between history and reform originated in the seminal works of men like Muratori, Maffei and Giannone. Its impetus was derived from the real difficulty of achieving concrete reforms in a land which was so fragmented and subdivided, which was the inheritor of so many traditions and memories, and which contained so extraordinary a variety of forms of government, ranging from the Papacy to the republics, from the duchies to the kingdoms. Italy in the eighteenth century was a museum-a museum which, while it enchanted travellers from abroad, left the men of the Enlightenment stupefied and indignant, and naturally inspired them all to make continual comparisons between past and present. Thus the eighteenth century in Italy was not only the age of enlightenment and the era of meticulous and deep ... rooted enquiry into the geography of Italy, the forms of its society, and the economy of the country. It was also the epoch in which enlightened thinkers were often historians, and, less often, historians were men of the Enlighten ... ment. To take just two examples: the last work of Pietro Verri, the foremost of the Lombard reformers, was a large ... scale history of Milan. Carlantonio Pilati, the writer from Trento whose principal work, Di una Riforma d'Italia, provided both the slogan
A comparison with the contemporary situation in other European countries is not without interest. It would be difficult for us to imagine Jean .. Jacques Rousseau writing a voluminous history of Geneva, or Denis Diderot compiling a history of Paris, or even Turgot publishing a history of the German Empire (though he was one of the very few men of the French Enlighten ... ment capable of reading German). The contrast between French encyclopedisme and Italian illuminismo is brought out very clearly by this paradoxical comparison. However, even in France, we must never forget that one of the strongest roots for the develop ... ment of ideas in the eighteenth century lay in the great dispute between Dubas and Boulainvilliers over the monarchy, the nobility and the Third Estate. Montesquieu was also a great historian. Amongst the writers of the second half of the century, Condillac and his brother Mably-stimulated, it is true, by practical demands that came from Parma-were the pioneers of Enlightenment writing on political and social history. The debate on the past became more intense as the Revolution approached. In France, before and after the wonderful decade which saw the publication of the Encyclopaedia, past and present met, not only on an ideological and political plane, but also on that of historical understanding.
