La Rèvolution française hors de France : quelques perspectives de recherche sur l’historiographie italienne entre XIXe et XXe siècle

Was there ever an Italian historiography of the French Revolution prior to the post-war period ? The article tackles this question by reading the many references to the transalpine democratic heritage in left-wing Italian political culture between the 19th and 20th centuries from a new angle. Interpretations of the Revolution which appeared in Italy towards the end of the 19th century adopted a very negative line on the Terror and instead emphasized the importance of the federative movements that occurred in 1793. This original perspective was sustained into the 1930s and only really evolved after the second world war, when the new Italian historiography established a profound link between the Italian jacobins and the French jacobins. To-day, this perspective is still very much present in the Italian university and has tended to obscure completely the previous historiography. Which is why a return to the first phase of Italian research on the Revolution can help us assess the weight of the revolutionary tradition in the political culture of modern Italy.