Italy

Italy in the novel is at once a political project and a country whose regions remain divided by history, interest, and habit. Its birth is announced through a village plebiscite, but the new national order does not erase local power: old aristocratic standing, emerging wealth, and private networks continue to shape what political change means on the ground.

A country imagined from Sicily

The novel sets national transformation against the perspective of Sicily, where political promises arrive with the memory of repeated invasions. Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina, regards the prospect of a new age with scepticism: earlier conquerors, he reflects, also promised a flourishing future, without delivering it. In his view, negotiation and limited violence may alter the names and personnel in power while leaving much of life recognizably unchanged.

That scepticism is tested in his dealings with Russo, a dependent whom Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina, sees as representative of an advancing class. Russo professes loyalty and friendship while supporting the new movement and pursuing the purchase of the Prince’s estate at Argivocale through intermediaries. He anticipates liberty, security, lower taxes, and greater opportunity, but also assures the Prince that Villa Salina will be safe because of his own local connections. The exchange makes Italy’s transition tangible as a contest over land, protection, and influence, not simply a change of national allegiance.

Sicily’s apparent secrecy also complicates the idea of a country neatly divided between old rulers and new. In a place where houses are barred and peasants may deny knowing the route to a nearby village, reserve proves less substantial than it appears. Political loyalties and private interests circulate through personal relationships; the island’s guarded surface does not prevent people from understanding what others are doing.

The plebiscite and the appearance of consent

At Donnafugata, Italy’s national transformation takes the form of a local vote. Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina, walks to the Town Hall with Father Pirrone and Don Onofrio Rotolo. In the voting room, the committee members rise as he enters, and peasants who arrived earlier are moved aside. He hands his affirmative vote to Don Calogero Sedàra. Father Pirrone does not vote, having avoided registration as a resident; Don Onofrio Rotolo votes as the Prince wishes.

The announced result is total in its simplicity: 515 voters, 512 recorded as having voted, 512 affirmative votes, and no negative votes. The evening’s public ceremony adds its own symbols: portraits of Giuseppe Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel II hang together, while red, green, and white liqueurs on a table evoke the new flag. The Prince’s smile at the improvised tricolour emblem briefly tempers his remorse, but the ceremony’s detail also shows how national identity is staged through local rituals and official presentation.

The vote’s unanimous result sits beside the exclusion of women from voting. Before dusk, several women appear in the square wearing tricolour ribbons in their hair as a protest; even advanced liberals jeer at them, and they are driven away. A newspaper account later recasts their appearance as a demonstration welcomed by an applauding patriotic crowd. The contrast between the women’s actual treatment and the published version exposes the gap between the public story of national consent and who is permitted to participate in it.

Unity and regional division

The country’s political future appears no less unsettled after unification. At a later gathering, Colonel Pallavicino explains why his troops fired on Giuseppe Garibaldi’s followers at Aspromonte. He says he was acting under written orders, but also feared that failing to fire could have led to French and Austrian intervention and the collapse of the newly assembled Kingdom of Italy. In his account, the shooting also helped Giuseppe Garibaldi by freeing him from followers whose schemes and methods differed from those of the men who had landed with him at Marsala. The episode makes the creation of Italy appear dependent not on a simple national consensus but on force, political calculation, and competing ideas of how the country should be made.

Pallavicino describes the post-unification state as more divided after reunion than before it. Turin resists losing its status as capital; Milan considers the administration inferior to the Austrian one; Florence fears for its works of art; and Naples mourns the industries it has lost. Sicily, he says, faces a growing and difficult-to-name disaster. He predicts that red-shirted movements may return, followed by forces of other colours and then red shirts again. The succession of colours suggests that unification has not ended political conflict; it has given the conflict new forms.

Changing officeholders, enduring interests

The transfer of influence is also visible in the relationship between Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina, and Don Calogero Sedàra. When invited to accept a Senate nomination, the Prince instead recommends Don Calogero Sedàra. He points to Sedàra’s power, practical ability, and usefulness during the May crisis, while noting that he can create political illusions when necessary. Ten years later, Don Calogero Sedàra does enter the Senate. The recommendation captures a shift in who can claim a place in national institutions: practical power and political utility increasingly outweigh the old Prince’s inherited standing.

Yet the Prince’s dealings with Don Calogero Sedàra are not simply a story of one class replacing another. At the plebiscite, the Prince’s vote is delivered into Sedàra’s hands; in his later recommendation, he helps direct the new political order toward a man whose rise he has already observed. The old and new are joined through cooperation as well as rivalry, and the state’s formal institutions remain entangled with personal judgment and local advantage.

National memory and the novel’s final perspective

Italy’s unity later becomes a matter of public commemoration. As preparations begin for the fiftieth anniversary of The Thousand, Angelica Sedàra serves on the committee and arranges for Don Fabrizio, her nephew, to march in a procession on Via Libertà beneath a large sign bearing Salina. She presents the gesture as a fusion of old and new: a Salina paying homage to Giuseppe Garibaldi. The red invitation card recalls the strip of silk Tancredi Falconeri once wore, giving the national celebration a family memory as well as a political message.

At Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina’s deathbed, Italy enters on a more inward register. While Tancredi Falconeri talks of political developments, the Prince’s attention turns to a reckoning with his own life. Nearby, a barrel-organ plays a song associated with the country’s rancour and suffering; Tancredi Falconeri stops it, and silence closes in around the dying man. The national story, like the Prince’s private one, remains unresolved: public ceremonies and political institutions proclaim a new Italy, while division, loss, and the limits of historical change persist beneath them.