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Giuseppe Mazzini

Giuseppe Mazzini was an Italian revolutionary, born in Genoe in 1807. Giuseppe Mazzini had sought to put together a coherent programme for a unitary Italian Republic. He had become a member of the secret society of the Carbonari. At a young age of 24, he was sent into exile in 1831 for attempting a revolution in Liguria. He, subsequently, founded two underground societies, first, Young Italy in Marseilles, and then, Young Europe in Berne, whose members were like-minded young men from Poland, France, Italy and the German states. Mazzini believed that God had intended nations to be the natural units of mankind. So Italy could not continue to be a patchwork of small states and kingdoms. It had to be forged into a single unified republic within a wider alliance of nations. This unification alone could be the basis of Italian liberty. Following his model, secret societies were set-up in Germany, France, Switzerland and Poland. Mazzini’s relentless opposition to monarchy and his vision of democratic republic frightened the conservatives. Metternich (monarch rule of Austria) described him as ‘the most dangerous enemy of existing social order’.