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I am waiting for the Wizzair plane to take off and take me to Turin and steel myself for lots of propaganda about the unification of Italy being a good thing. Of course it was an utter disaster. Strange how some nationalists like Garibaldi, Cavour, Gandhi, Lincoln, Kenyatta etc are considered good things but most are for some reason considered bad. What idiotic and often malign ideas the people who rule us subscribe to.
Small is usually beautiful but some unions work. France, Spain and Great Britain do. The union of Great Britain with Ireland would have worked had Ireland been given Home Rule. Italy and Germany have not and Europe would be very much worse.
Turin, hah! I love it, been there once and had to go back. There was a Beethoven week (we didn't go to Turin on purpose, we actually found out about it when we were already there), the Orchestra della RAI played the integral of symphonies and piano concerti over several evenings in the Piazza San Carlo. I've expected people roaming from one corner of the square to the other, incessant mobile phone conversations, a kind of funfair atmosphere. And then nothing of that. Politeness as in a concert hall. I was really impressed by the Torinesi.
ReplyDeleteDon't miss the Royal Church, adjacent to the Royal Palace, the San Lorenzo church designed by polymath Guarino Guarini. It's really a must. Ask around for a guide. He'll tell you about the light reflections at certain hours that illuminate from below certain niches (because the light reflects off the floor). Or about the double hull of the church. It's a marvel of proportions and chromatic harmony.
You don't have to go to the Risorgimento Museum but admire its waving and concave façade. If you're into museums, I've enjoyed Palazzo Madama and the Savoy Gallery (Galleria Sabauda) or the Egyptian Antiquities Museum.
There's a small private art gallery (a bit of Canaletto and quite beautiful modern art) of the Agnello family (owners (or ex-owners?) of Fiat) somewhere in building (a little bit off-centre) where Fiat/Alfa-Romeo has a race-track on the roof. You can walk on it, watch the bends as they climb almost vertically on the walls.
Note the street that links the centre with the Po river (Via Po). It has arcades on both sides (I think it's Italy's most "arcaded" city), but on one side the arcades span street crossings. It's the side of the street on which the king walked so it did not rain on him even when he crossed the street.
You'll see the Superga hill and church in the distance, towering above the city. I do not recommend it unless you're fond of baroque mausolei in cold crypts where the whole Savoy family rests.
Might I point out that Lincoln was elected president of a nation that had been in existence for eighty-plus years, seventy-plus under the Constitution? How then can one classify him with Garibaldi and Cavour?
ReplyDeleteGaribaldi was a great man. Cavour too though an inveterate liar and crook. Lincoln by letting the Southern states secede as they wanted to do would have saved 700,000 lives. Instead he took the line that George III took to Washington et al - with the difference that the divine right of kings did not apply to a federal republic created by 13 sovereign states.
DeleteItaly and Germany not being united would have been very good for the French. They'd have had a chance of remaining the dominant military and political power in Europe. But would that have been a good thing? The French had made a bid for European hegemony between 1792 and 1815 and the result was a bloodbath that was not quite on the scale of the First World War but it was close. Some estimates put the death toll as high as six-and-a-half million, in a Europe with a smaller population than in 1914. Would the French have tried again? It's possible.
ReplyDeleteItaly and Germany not being united would have been very good for the British. They'd have had a chance of being the dominant economic power in Europe. Would that have been a good thing? For Britain yes, but for Europe?
I don't see the First World War as being the result of the existence of the five Great Powers. I don't even see it as the consequence of the unification of Germany. I see it as being the consequence of the insane system of international alliances. International alliances are always a bad thing in my opinion.
The Second World War would not have happened had Hitler or another dictator not taken power in a united Germany.
ReplyDeleteSure. You could also argue that the First World War would never have happened if those international alliances that I dislike so much (the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance) had not existed. And if the First World War didn't happen then Hitler would never have come to power and the Second World War would never have happened. And if the First World War didn't happen then the Russian Revolution would never have occurred and the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires would have survived.
DeleteBy the way I don't disagree with you about German unification. It did turn out badly.
I think the Napoleonic Wars and the First World War between them more or less doomed our civilisation. I don't think German unification would have happened without the Napoleonic Wars.
How could the unification of Germany not have turned out badly? The unification of Italy turned out badly too. The impoverishment of the Two Sicilies, decades of anticlerical government, Mussolini. Alliances and wars are inevitable. Without a strong united Germany or Italy a balance of power might have been easier to maintain. We nowadays in Europe think we have escaped history but we have not. An Israeli journalist (originally British, but he said he hadn't much liked Britain) called Jonathan Spyer had his Facebook account deleted years ago after he said a low level Islamist insurgency was taking place in Europe. Whatever the truth of that wars in Europe are inevitable, probably not between state actors, at least of the former USSR.
DeleteThis is Mr Spyer's story. https://jonathanspyer.com/2016/08/12/un-facebooked/
DeleteHow could the unification of Germany not have turned out badly? The unification of Italy turned out badly too.
DeleteMore or less. Many of the problems of nationalism have also been caused by the practice of drawing borders that are never really going to work. Borders that create fake counties like Czechoslovakia. Or the Ukraine. Or Belgium for that matter.
You could argue that it would have been better had France never been unified. For centuries France was just too powerful and was constantly succumbing to the temptation to try for European hegemony.
One could argue that or many other things but the French state has existed since the first millennium - Germany and Italy only since 1870.
DeleteRomania made out pretty darn well in the First World War. Arguably better than it deserved to.
ReplyDelete