The Greek Revolution in the Age of Revolutions (1776-1848) brings together twenty-one scholars and a host of original ideas, revisionist arguments, and new information to mark the bicentennial of the Greek Revolution of 1821. The purpose of this volume is to demonstrate the significance of the Greek liberation struggle to international history, and to highlight how it was a turning point that signalled the revival of revolution in Europe after the defeat of the French Revolution in 1815. It argues that the sacrifices of rebellious Greeks paved the way for other resistance movements in European politics, culminating in the ‘spring of European peoples’ in 1848. Richly researched and innovative in approach, this volume also considers the diplomatic and transnational aspects of the insurrection, and examines hitherto unexplored dimensions of revolutionary change in the Greek world. This book will appeal to scholars and students of the Age of Revolution, as well as those interested in comparative and transnational history, political theory and constitutional law.

Coppa provides the first full-length study of Giacomo Antonelli, friend and advisor to Pope Pius IX (Pio Nono) and his Secretary of State and chief minister from 1849 to 1876. Based on the documents of the secret Vatican Archives, and neglected family papers in the State Archive in Rome, the book gives an important reevaluation of this key diplomatic figure, separating the man from the myth and delving into his character and policies. The book examines both the personality and policies of the Cardinal, who was seen to be the Pope's Richelieu and Mazarin combined. Confronting the polemical literature which has charged him with sexual misconduct and venality, the study examines his early formation and career, the inspiration for his European policies, his relationship to Pio Nono, and the part he played in the Counter-Risorgimento and the Papal reaction. By improving our understanding of Papal, Italian, and European developments during these crucial decades, this study provides new insights into Rome's fortress mentality and its rejection of the main currents that were transforming western life— currents that influenced not only the Catholic Church but European society as a whole.

Distant Revolutions: 1848 and the Challenge to American Exceptionalism is a study of American politics, culture, and foreign relations in the mid-nineteenth century, illuminated through the reactions of Americans to the European revolutions of 1848. Flush from the recent American military victory over Mexico, many Americans celebrated news of democratic revolutions breaking out across Europe as a further sign of divine providence. Others thought that the 1848 revolutions served only to highlight how America’s own revolution had not done enough in the way of reform. Still other Americans renounced the 1848 revolutions and the thought of trans-atlantic unity because they interpreted European revolutionary radicalism and its portents of violence, socialism, and atheism as dangerous to the unique virtues of the United States. When the 1848 revolutions failed to create stable democratic governments in Europe, many Americans declared that their own revolutionary tradition was superior; American reform would be gradual and peaceful. Thus, when violence erupted over the question of territorial slavery in the 1850s, the effect was magnified among antislavery Americans, who reinterpreted the menace of slavery in light of the revolutions and counter-revolutions of Europe. For them a new revolution in America could indeed be necessary, to stop the onset of authoritarian conditions and to cure American exemplarism. The Civil War, then, when it came, was America’s answer to the 1848 revolutions, a testimony to America’s democratic shortcomings, and an American version of a violent, nation-building revolution.