2016 Programme
Event #39
Alessandro Barbero
The space of war. The Third Italian War of Independence
In 1866 Italy, united five years prior, attacks its centennial enemy, Austria, to complete the eastward leap that had been interrupted seven years before by the Villafranca armistice. This time, Lombardy is the base from which the attack sets off; the enemy is forced into the Quadrilateral; the Italians have both numerical superiority and generals who are confident in victory. But many factors can change the outcome of a war, even when it appears to have already been written: an overly ambitious strategy, rivalries between generals, the atavistic vices of a country where it is considered wise to take on as little responsibility as possible. Aside from the geographical constraints of a space that keeps posing the same dilemmas, so much so that the final battle would be fought in Custoza, exactly where the defining battle of the First War of Independence had been fought, and lost.
Alessandro Barbero is a historian and a writer and a tenured professor of Medieval History at Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale e Vercelli. He writes for La Stampa and Tuttolibri. He is a contributor on the television program Superquark and the shows Il tempo e la storia and a.C.d.C., broadcast by Rai Storia. His publications include: Benedette guerre. Crociate e jihad («i Libri del Festival della Mente», 2009), Lepanto. La battaglia dei tre imperi («i Libri del Festival della Mente», 2010), Donne, madonne, mercanti e cavalieri. Sei storie medievali («i Libri del Festival della Mente», 2013), published by Laterza; Gli occhi di Venezia (Mondadori, 2011); Il divano di Istanbul (Sellerio, 2011); Dietro le quinte della Storia. La vita quotidiana attraverso il tempo, written with P. Angela (Rizzoli, 2012); Le Ateniesi (Mondadori, 2015); Costantino il vincitore (Salerno Editrice, 2016); Le parole del papa (2016) and Caporetto (2017), published by Laterza. Il divano di Istanbul (2011), Alabama (2021) and Poeta al comando (2022) and Brick for stone (2023), published by Sellerio.
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