Nations Divided: America, Italy, and the Southern Question.

By Don H. Doyle. Georgia Southern University Jack N. and Addie D. Averitt Lecture Series, No. 10. (Athens, Ga., and London: University of Georgia Press, c. 2002. Pp. [xx], 130, $24.95, ISBN 0-8203-2330-6.)

In this thought-provoking interpretive volume, Don H. Doyle explores the interaction of nation, region, and identity by comparing the historical experiences of the United States and Italy. Beginning with the establishment of newly independent states during the American Revolution and the Italian Risorgimento of 1859-1870, Doyle focuses on efforts to build national identity. In both countries, he argues, such efforts emerged first in struggles for independence waged against foreign powers and then in an internal demonization of a region perceived as deviant and backward: the South. There were important differences, however, in the way Americans and Italians conceived of nationhood: at the onset, at least, a "civic" identity rooted "in political rather than ethnic terms, in belief rather than blood" (p. 17) distinguished the United States from most of Europe, where a "nation" typically connoted a common "people" with a shared past. Nevertheless, in both Italy and the United States, the establishment of independent states was the easy part of nation-building. "America and Italy had been made," Doyle observes; "now the task would be to make Americans and Italians" (p. 34).

This book is filled with interesting ideas and arguments, some of which I found more persuasive than others. Let me mention two themes that struck me as significant, in need of elaboration, and likely to prove controversial. First, Doyle challenges the now-prevalent interpretation (identified with Benedict Anderson, Eric Hobsbawm, and others) of nations as "imagined communities" consciously imposed through "invented traditions" rather than reflections of a "primordial" sense of peopledom. Although he sees this interpretation as a product of "reaction to the horrors nationalism has visited on the twentieth century" more than dispassionate scholarship (p. 16), much of Doyle's own evidence seems to support the interpretation he questions, especially for Italy. Noting that only about 2.5 percent of "Italians" spoke Italian at the time of unification, he describes a process of "creating Italians" that often proceeded very much from the top down. Second, although Doyle skillfully compares the place of the two Souths in creating American and Italian identity, I suspect that not everyone will buy the argument (also recently propounded by Susan-Mary Grant) that American nationalism emerged as antisouthern nationalism. This argument at times seems to depend on conflating antisouthern and antislavery; it also begs the question of how in the twentieth century the South became increasingly central to American self-perceptions rather than continuing to serve as a scorned "Other."

No volume--certainly not one this brief--can resolve all of these issues. For raising them in an intelligent and interesting manner, however, Doyle deserves our thanks. Nations Divided is an admirable interpretive essay that should be of great interest to students of the United States and Italy, their two Souths, and comparative history.

PETER KOLCHIN

University of Delaware