“Italianissimo but not simpatico”. Hugh Forbes nella Rivoluzione Italiana del 1848-49

Abstract

Official history knows Hugh Forbes (1808?-1892) as the author of a minor guerrilla textbook and a player of bit parts in Garibaldi’s retreat from Rome (1849), the John Brown’s Harpers Ferry raid (1857-1859) and the Expedition of the Thousand in Sicily (1860). At a closer scrutiny, however, he turns out to be an intriguing, even baffling character, whose comings and goings through Britain, Europe and the States left an amazing trail of documentary evidence from which we are building up his biography. In this paper we propose a reconstruction of Forbes’ early life and an analysis of the role he played in the Italian revolution of 1848-49. A role which helps to illuminate Lord Palmerston’s policy towards Italian and, above all, Sicilian independence. And a biography in which the history of armed international radicalism and the genesis of the First Edwardian Globalization and the Anglo-.Franco-Italian Proto West are strongly intertwined.