Between 1843 and 1861, Italian moderates were crucial in the process of the country’s unification. The latest historiography has extensively analyzed their role in all of its internal and international implications and has often emphasized their cultural backwardness in comparison to the major European currents of thought.

On the other hand, the Italian historian Luca Mannori has denounced the inconsistency of portraying Italian liberals as feeble and narrow-minded, vis à vis their mobilization for the constitution involving all of the states of the peninsula in the first few months of 1848. Indeed, their theories proved to be decisive in the transition from the old monarchic and aristocratic world to the new democratic one. Therefore, according to Mauro Lenci, it is worth analyzing their two-faced relation with popular sovereignty, to contribute to understand the neglected political and theoretical reasons of their success.

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Mauro Lenci, Scylla and Charybdis: Italian moderates between absolute monarchy and the sovereignty of the people 1843–1861