The history of the Habsburg Empire in the post-Napoleonic era is frequently approached from the perspective of its various component nationalities. These were traditionally portrayed in the historiography as engaged in more-or-less open struggle with control from Vienna. This article argues that the over-privileging of such national categories can distort the picture. By looking at a number of case studies – the naming of Lombardy-Venetia, the Biblioteca italiana, the Panteon veneto – the relationship between Venice (and its Terraferma) and Habsburg rule during the second Austrian domination is examined. It will be argued that it is more profitable to see Venetian identities (municipal, local, Italian, and as part of a wider transnational European culture) as capable of working for as well as against the empire, and that Habsburg policy was as often concerned with managing potential local rivalries (notably between Lombards and Venetians) as with controlling a perceived Italian threat. It is also suggested that, while cultivation of local identity was often used to reinforce the national, the Austrian authorities were also happy to annex both to further imperial interests.

Twenty-something John Dunn remembered July 17, 1872 well. A witness for the defense in both a bastardy trial brought by 15-year-old Mary Morgan and a later seduction suit brought by her father, John would recount that summer day by drawing on the rough, sexual slang he likely used in conversations with male friends. After he was sworn in, John informed the legal participants and curious local spectators gathered at the Perry County Circuit Court that the July 17 buggy ride with young Mary had presented him with the opportunity to “feel of her titties and monkey.” John's testimony was hardly the most vulgar given during the proceedings. Another character witness, Robert B. Ward, disclosed a particularly salacious conversation he had overheard while in the “privy” behind a DuQuoin general store. Eavesdropping, Ward listened to two young men discuss Mary Morgan's “condition” with one another. The man Ward recognized, Thomas Williams, told his friend he would leave the state rather than marry a girl who “ran around screwing this one and that one,” if Mary did happen to “swear the child on him.” Thomas's buddy agreed that dodging the law would be preferable to matrimony with Mary for she had not “behaved herself.” “I have screwed her as often as I have fingers and toes, or oftener, and you know it,” he confided to Thomas. “Yes I know that,” Thomas replied, “She don't know more than a hog whose child it is.”

The revival of interest in music evident in recent historiography has led to an investigation of the specifically transnational nature of musical languages and practices. This article explores the possibility of re-reading in a transnational perspective the classical theme of the relationship between the Risorgimento and opera. It focuses on two different points of view: on the one hand, the construction of the librettos as a delicate balance between European romantic narratives and dramatic themes evoking nationalistic sentiments; on the other, the fact that ideas and practices of the theatre as a vehicle of political mobilisation developed in a broad international context where Mazzini and many other nationalists found inspiration in multinational political experiences and discourses. The article concludes by saying that the meanings of terms such as cosmopolitanism and nationalism need to be carefully weighed when we look at nineteenth-century opera production. Only in the closing decades of the century did genuine competition between national traditions arise, which led in Italy to a veritable ‘obsession’ with ‘Italianness’ in music.

The article discusses new studies of foreign soldiers in the Italian armed groups of the (Anti-)Risorgimento against the background of recent scholarship on ‘transnational soldiers’, which acknowledges the complexities of foreigners' initial motives for enlistment and of the transnational processes inside the single armies. The article suggests that from the mundane structures of military life to the perceptions of the rank-and-file, many aspects of the soldiering experience in the multinational armed groups on all sides of the Risorgimento actually advanced rather than obviated national boundaries. This paper further demonstrates that the military cultures of the nationalists and the anti-unity forces were much more porous and mutually constitutive than is often recognised. The histories of the ‘transnational soldiers’ in the armed groups of the Risorgimento and Anti-Risorgimento are crucial for a possibly new, comparative history of the armed groups of the (Anti-)Risorigmento. This paper explores approaches of the culturally revived ‘new military history’ and suggests that it provides much still unrealised potential for Risorgimento historiography.

A woman's freedom to develop her personality or identity as she sees fit is supposed to be legally protected in twenty-first century Europe. The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) provides a right to respect for one's private life in Article 8 which has been judicially interpreted to provide a right to identity or personality development. Additionally, Article 14 provides for non-discrimination and Articles 9 and 10 for freedom of expression, including that which is religious. Arguments are examined of some different interpretations of the overall purpose of human rights law − to respect human dignity and human freedom. These are examined by reference to the recent criminalisation of wearing face coverings in public places in certain European countries where the intention is to prevent the wearing of the Islamic full-face veil.1 It is argued that each woman's identity is legally recognised when the concepts of human dignity and human freedom are interpreted as empowering and self-determining rather than constraining and paternalistic. Legally banning full-face veils, in liberal democracies in situations where an adult woman says she has freely chosen to wear such a garment, misrecognises her and disrespects her identity or personality: as a human being, as a member of a religious or cultural group and as an individual person capable of subjectively interpreting her own identity or personality as she sees fit.