Nation-building in 19th-century Italy: the case of Francesco Crispi.

THE RE-EMERGENCE of nationalism as a powerful and virulent factor in international relations -- in the Balkans, the former Soviet empire, and elsewhere -- together with the increasing momentum in Europe towards ever-greater political integration, has focused minds in the last decade on problems of national identity.

The question famously posed in a lecture of 1882 by the French philosopher and historian, Ernest Renan, `What is a nation?' has acquired a new relevance. Following the pioneering work of Benedict Anderson, Eric Hobsbawm and Ernest Gellner in the 1980s, issues of how ...

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