Our so-called ‘national history’ is marked — and not merely in its most stereotypical forms — by the emphasis and glorification of what possessed a chiefly anti-traditional character: from the revolt of the city-states against imperial authority70 to those aspects of the Risorgimento which most reflected the ideas of ’89,71 to Italian intervention in the First World War.72 This applies not just to our ‘national history’ but to history in general.
