Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. Numbers and Nationhood
  • Cited by 116
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
October 2009
Print publication year:
1996
Online ISBN:
9780511523458
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511523458
Subjects:
Social and Population History, Area Studies, European History after 1450, History, European Studies
Series:
Cambridge Studies in Italian History and Culture
Information

Book description

Numbers and Nationhood, first published in 1996, explores the Italian inflection of a Europe-wide phenomenon in the nineteenth century: the rise of statistics as a mode of representation in society. Silvana Patriarca examines the ideologies which informed the copious statistical literature produced between the 1820s, when statistical publications began to proliferate in the Italian states, and the 1870s, when a unified Italy entered a fully positivistic era. Her innovative study illuminates the relationship between the needs of an emerging nation and the uses to which statistics were put, generating a long-lasting image of Italy which nevertheless accentuated its internal territorial divisions. By examining the power of numerical representations, Numbers and Nationhood provides a fresh reading of the historiography of Risorgimento Italy and of positivism, bringing to the fore issues of science, ideology, and representation.

Awards

Winner of the Marraro Prize of the American Historical Association

Reviews

‘… an important contribution to the broader task of examining the interplay of culture and politics that shaped the national question during the Risorgimento’.

Source: Modern Italy

‘ … fascinating … offers remarkably effective keys for rereading the interplay of science, culture and politics in the formation of bourgeois public opinion in Italy in the age of Unification. … brilliant and fascinating reconstruction of the subtexts of debates to which cultural and intellectual historians of the Risorgimento have previously paid little attention … combines thoughtful new research and concepts to develop an original, coherent and stimulating thesis from which all historians on nineteenth-century Italy will have much to learn’.

Source: Journal of Modern Italian Studies

‘ … this important and intelligent book … is a vital contribution to the historiography of Italian nationalism … suggests ways in which the new cultural history and the more traditional social and political history can complement and enrich each other. In this respect, its importance also transcends the boundaries of the Italian peninsula.’

Source: Economic History Review

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

Contents

Contents

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.