This introduction engages with the story of a generation of Italian Hegelians, who began to engage with Hegel’s political thought shortly after his death, in 1832, and continued to grapple with it until the end of the century. It discusses the contribution of this book to the most recent scholarly debates on Hegel and Italian Hegelianism, to the broader field of the history of political thought, as well as to the research on nineteenth-century Italian political thought. It outlines a new perspective on a time of radical political and intellectual transformation undergone by one of the most spectacular instances of nation- and state-building of nineteenth-century Europe by presenting one of the main feature of modern Italian political thought. It argues that Italian Hegelianism shows that it is in history that philosophy acquires its political relevance.