Mazzini

Giuseppe Mazzini, commonly known as Mazzini, was an Italian politician, philosopher, and activist whose ideas and organizing efforts played a central role in the Risorgimento, the movement for Italian unification. He was born in Genoa on June 22, 1805 and died in Pisa on March 10, 1872. Mazzini advanced a vision of a united Italy based on republican government, popular sovereignty, and universal rights.

In the early 1830s, Mazzini founded Giovine Italia (Young Italy), an organization dedicated to the creation of a unified Italian republic and the overthrow of monarchical and papal rule in the peninsula. He argued that liberty, equality, and national self-determination should be the foundation of politics, and he published political treatises such as The Duties of Man, which articulated his moral and civic philosophy. Because of his activities, he spent much of his life in exile, living in Switzerland, France, and Britain, where he sought to connect activist networks and publish articles that inspired nationalist movements.

Mazzini’s ideas influenced a broad spectrum of Italian patriots and, beyond Italy, European liberal and republican currents. Although the unification of Italy in 1861 ultimately occurred under the monarchy of the House of Savoy rather than a republican state, Mazzini’s emphasis on national unity, civic virtue, and popular participation left a lasting imprint on Italian political culture and on later movements that favored republican democracy.

His legacy remains that of a principled advocate for national self-determination and human rights, who sought to fuse moral philosophy with political action.