Giuseppe Mazzini: An Essay on the Duties of Man: Addressed to Workingmen

Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872) was not merely an Italian patriot and one of the main agitators who led Italy to gain its independence and unity in the nineteenth century. He was also a truly influential European intellectual and philosopher whose writings inspired the democratic revolutions of 1848 and various movements for national self-determination and republicanism. His secret society, Young Italy, soon spread his political agenda over Europe with the founding of many similar national organizations. After the defeat of the 1848 revolutions, however, Mazzini’s immediate political power waned, and Italian national unity was reached under the forces of the Savoy monarchy, a project that was radically different from the republic that Mazzini had in mind. Forced into exile from Italy because of his republican ideas, he worked on his most important book, An Essay on the Duties of Man: Addressed to Workingmen; it went on to become his political legacy and remained an enduring source of inspiration for various nationalist movements, among them, those in India and China. Mazzini’s emphasis on social reform and improvement through education and civic virtue also appealed to turn-of-the-century middle-class American reformers such as Jane Addams and muckraker journalists such as Upton Sinclair.