Rassegna storica del Risorgimento

Libri e periodici
407
by Pennsylvanìa's celebrated diplomatic historian Lynn Case, his investìgation of the foreign affaire for Maximillian's Mexican empire [1971] particularly demonstrated his talents. Now after an excursion into 19th century Jerusalera, publishing and glossine the diary of a British consul there, together with researches on the development of Zionism, he is returning to focus on a first love. That is the diplomatic side of the 1859 struggle with France and Sardinia against Austria,
I was fortunate to have read in early draft A Carefully Planned Accident. Its very first sentence set the keynote: Tbis work is a study of the means whereby diplomacy was used to pian, provoke, and tlien to conclude a major European war. The title is an oxymoron. By its very nature an accident is not supposed to be contrived or anticipated. Blumberg shows step by step for the first time in English in this depth how Louis Napoleon and Camillo di Cavour created a model of triumphant statecraft for the very observant Prussian minister-president to copy during the 1860's Otto von Bismarck weighted their modus operandi.
This account is based on manuscripts in London and Paris archives plus printed materials in Italian and German. It is claimed that history is advanced by either new sources or new interpretations. The latest in both, together with Blumberg's evaluation, offers the English reader a cheerfui balance to events somewhat neglected in that tongue.
Austria's Baron Charles Ferdinand von Buol-Schauenstein who directed foreign policy was compared by a Bavarian to a locomotive which does not know where it is running and at every question gives out only steam and smoke. Bismarck himself stated, If I could be as great for a single hour as Buoi thinks he is ali the rime, I should establish my glory forever before God and man . Once the troop movements began in 1859 Francis Joseph turned hdm out of office.
The Cavour industry in Italy has examined at dose detail for years that statesman's policy. The wily Piedmontese considered his opposite number at Paris, Count Walewski, a giant incapacity . While the English historian Edward Gàbbon thought the use of such phrases to be a style less grave than that of history , tfaey sum up the characters Blumberg marches across history's parade ground. The opportunist French emperor whose reputation in Italy is good enough for a Street within a kilometer or two of Rome's Vittoriano to be named after him side by side with Turin's premier who was nudging him on, dragged in their wake Walewski, Buoi and Francis Joseph. Little wonder under such circumstances that the generals soon had their work arranged for them.
The Britisher Denis Maok Smith began 35 years ago with his Cavour and Garibaldi: 1860 periodically to chastize the Italians, even the greatest of them. Blumberg is much more sympathetic to the national aspirations of Italy's patriots. A century and a quarter back in the view of many public men, any unscrupulousness of Cavour was suitable instance of higher ends justifying the employment of lower means. Blumberg's emphasis is on the diplomatic prelude for the war that was forerunner in the peninsula for the heroic events of the 1860's. The climax of the narrative is passcd the moment that Cavour was seen rubbing his hands in satisfaction on lcarning the news of Austria's Aprii ultimatum.
A person wandcring years ago, when it was open, through the exhibits of the Museo del Risorgimento in the Vittoriano, noticed relics from the Campaign of 1859. There is the v/ar's blood and thunder. However these become even more compre-hensible when one has scanned Blumberg's account of the attendant dispatches, démarches, notes, encounters, speeches and newspaper editorials. They do not lend themselves to museum-slylc display.
Anglophones, of course, will profit from Arnold Blumberg's rending of the 1859 War's diplomacy. So too will any scholar who for the future wants to know today's judgement on this past.
DUANB KOENIG