A xel K örner . America in Italy

American studies have a long tradition in Europe, though Europeans’ perspectives are often neglected by Americans themselves. Axel Körner’s America in Italy: The United States in the Political Thought and Imagination of the Risorgimento, 1763–1865 contributes to an understanding of how the United States was studied and imagined in Italy, from the Enlightenment and the formation of the U.S. Constitution, through the unification of Italy in the Risorgimento, to the bloody Civil War unraveling the United States and discrediting American federalism. Körner targets “Americans’ overestimation of their role in teaching the rest of the world,” claiming that “while this might be a common view among Americans even today, Italians had reasons to reject these perceptions confidently” (21). Hedging with many qualifiers, Körner adopts a negative stance toward much of American historiography: “Contrary to widely held views among American observers of the Risorgimento, which still inform a good deal of transatlantic historiography today, Italians largely abstained from treating recent American history as a blueprint for their own struggle for independence” (7). Körner argues that Italian political theorists relied instead upon both their own long history of republican and monarchical traditions as well as diverse local models of politics, rather than looking to the United States: “Unlike America, Italy had a history” (99). Körner’s historiographical attack is unnecessarily exaggerated and condescending.

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