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Mazzini, Giuseppe
The principal ideologue of Italian unification, a leading exponent of democratic nationalism, and an influential social thinker, Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–72) was born into a respectable middle-class family in Genoa, a few weeks after the incorporation of the city into the French empire of Napoleon Bonaparte. As a young man, he was heavily influenced by Romantic thought, and throughout his life, he never lost his belief that faith and passion were essential to political action. A turning point in his life, he later claimed, came in 1821, when he encountered Italian patriots leaving Genoa for exile after a failed patriotic rising in Piedmont: From that moment, he vowed to dedicate himself totally to the cause of Italian freedom.
After graduating in law in 1827, Mazzini joined the ...
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