La nazione sulle barricate. Immaginari politici, tecniche insurrezionali e culture di guerra tra Parigi e Roma nel 1849

The Nation at the Barricades. Political Imaginary, Insurrectional Techniques, and Cultures of War between Paris and Rome in 1849. This article deals with the military and political usages of the barricades during the 1849 defence of republican Rome against the French army. By using a vast array of sources, including visual and material ones, the article analyses the political imaginary underpinning the construction of barricades in Rome and underscores its links with both the French events of 1848 and the revolutionary and counterrevolutionary cultures since the 1830s. The article thus shows how barricades were instrumental in defining collective political identities. In the republican field, they became a symbol of the connection between the nation, democracy, civil mobilisation, and warfare. In the counterrevolutionary field, barricades helped construing the image of the enemy as a transnational, professional, and barbarous one.