Da Venezia verso Corfù : il Risorgimento mediterraneo degli esuli veneti

In 1849, following the fall of the Republic of San Marco, forty among the most compromised members of the former revolutionary government led by Daniele Manin were convicts to the exile by the Austrians, that were about to return in Venice. The order was to embark on a ship, that would pacifically have conducted them on the island of Corfu, from where they would have been able to continue toward the final destinations of their trip: the great capitals, Paris and London, but also Patras, Alexandria, Malta and other cities of the Mediterranean. Corfu, first destination of their exile, had been for centuries the outpost of the Serenissima in the Adriatic sea and the Venetians controlled it until the fall of the aristocratic Republic in the 1797. After the island had been conquered by the French army and by the Russians in 1799. When the exiles began to come, in the summer of 1849, Corfu, together with the other Ionian Islands (the so-called Heptanese), was under the authority of the British government. The island quickly began the perfect shelter for the Italian political emigrants, above all those escaping from Rome and from Veneto, that departed from the harbors of Ancona and Venice. Men belonging to all the social classes and practicing different jobs disembarked on the coasts of Corfu: some of them, well welcomed by the local Italian community and by the Greek inhabitants, chose the island as home and base for their political struggle. From Corfu, just few days by ship from the Italian harbors, they continued to compose their projects, really close to other exiles, not just from Italy, but from all the European countries, and close as well to their families. Hopefully they restarted to practice their professions, such as physicians, men of law, teachers, artisans. Also many soldiers belonged to this large group of exiles: some of them had rushed to help Venice from the rest of the peninsula, others, more numerous, were Austrian subjects removed from the army and from the imperial navy after the institution, in September 1849, of a military commission charged to identify and punish all the soldiers accused of treason. Among this group were authentic patriots resolved to continue their fight in the name of the Italian unification, but also soldiers without political desires, waiting to come back to their places. This group of exiles lived large part of their exile soliciting friends and families to help them to return in Italy, praying for an Austrian formal pardon; for this reason the other “patriotic exiles” were deeply suspicious of these behaviors that are, for us, a break with the traditional descriptions, often excessive, of the Italian communities of exiles. The Italian communities were always monitored by the large Austrian groups of consuls, diplomats and informers, essential tool, for the police, to control movements, purposes, plots of those that, for the government of Vienna, still remained the worst enemies of order and peace. Although the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia did not have its own diplomacy, communications and relationships regularly came in Venice with reports on political intentions, economic conditions and movements of the exiles in the Mediterranean area. Many Italians quickly realized that Corfu was a small place, with few possibilities to work – in 1849, 650 exiles from Veneto arrived in Corfu. For this reason they departed toward the great cities on the Mediterranean coasts: first of all Constantinople, Alger, Malta; but a large number of exiles moved to less populated and rich zones, such as in the Balkans, or in other Ionian islands. Therefore we can see as the ancient links between Venice and the East were confirmed, again, in this period: more than other Italians, in fact, the Venetians in the Risorgimento chose as privileged destinations of their exile, voluntary or not, the islands and the cities of the Mediterranean in which they found large, ancient and often wealthy Italian communities. In Albania, for instance, the catholic communities from Veneto hosted exiles as Pietro Marubi, from Piacenza and Gennaro Simini, from Salento; the first is now considered as the “founding-father” of photography in Albania and the second was one of the most successful doctors in Scutari. Throughout Corfu famous men have passed: Daniele Manin, former president of the Republic of San Marco – after, one of the most popular symbol of the Italian exile in France – and the former minister Tommaseo, that in Corfu wrote some of his popular books. Less famous men also arrived in the island, like the lawyer Andrea Meneghini, from Padua, or the former minister Leone Pincherle. They succeeded to leave, thanks to their professionalism, a deep imprint in the Ionian islands. The great worth of the exiles has been that they know how to communicate a new model of “being Italian” and of “being a real Nation”: this message reached both the Italians that lived in the Heptanese, and the Ionian inhabitants, that started to dream their independence from Britain and the reunion to the young Greek Nation. This was the deep meaning of the exile: give, as much as possible, new models of liberty.

Nel 1849, in seguito al fallimento della Repubblica di San Marco, quaranta fra i membri più compromessi del governo rivoluzionario furono condannati all’esilio dagli austriaci in procinto di rientrare a Venezia. L’ordine ricevuto era di imbarcarsi su una nave che li avrebbe condotti sull’isola di Corfù per poi proseguire verso la destinazione finale del loro viaggio: Patrasso, Alessandria e altre città del Mediterraneo. Erano in questo modo confermati i tradizionali rapporti culturali che da secoli legavano Venezia al Levante: più di altri italiani, infatti, i veneti nel Risorgimento scelsero come meta privilegiata del proprio esilio, volontario e non, le città del Mediterraneo. L’intervento, all’interno dell’asse tematico Viaggio/Viaggi, si propone di osservare le ragioni della scelta di un itinerario in linea con la tradizione storica dell’Italia nord-orientale, nonché le strategie adottate dagli esuli per integrarsi nelle comunità delle città levantine elevate a luogo d’esilio, per approfittare delle reti di solidarietà messe in campo dai compatrioti lì insediatisi per ragioni differenti da quelle politiche, e per portare avanti la propria lotta per la causa risorgimentale. Sarà inoltre interessante indagare come l’incontro tra antichi e nuovi gruppi d’italiani nelle città mediterranee abbia influito sulla loro percezione di sé come membri della stessa compagine nazionale, innestando nelle comunità preesistenti all’arrivo degli esuli un nuovo concetto di italianità.