History of the Italian Republics of the Middle Ages, Vol. 03

Jean-Charles-Léonard Simonde de SismondiProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.0
Word count
629K words
Chapters
63

Tags

Foreign Language Books World History Republic SystemHistorical ReappraisalCity-State PoliticsPolitical SystemPolitical AllegoryEuropean HistoryRise and FallPower GameMedieval HistoryItalian History

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Storia delle repubbliche italiane dei secoli di mezzo, v. 03 (of 16) by SismondiAuthor: Sismondi, J.-C.-L. Simonde de (Jean-Charles-Léonard Simonde), 1773-1842,Language: Italian, Class: DG: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Italy, Vatican City, Malta, Release Date: Sep 23, 2013

Editor's review

This is the third of the sixteen volumes of Sismondi's History of the Italian Republics of the Middle Ages, written in Italian, continuing the narrative of the rise and fall of the medieval Italian city-republics. Sismondi was both a historian and an economist, and his writing shows a sustained attention to city-state political institutions, factional strife, and socioeconomic conditions, combining the historian's exposition with the critic's judgment. This third volume stands in the middle of the whole work, usually taking up the city-state threads of the first two volumes and advancing to more specific political and military events. For Chinese readers, its value lies in offering a systematic nineteenth-century European historiographical account of the Italian republican tradition, one that can be read alongside primary texts such as Machiavelli and Guicciardini. The original Italian and the dense names of persons and places make reading demanding; it suits readers with language skills or research needs who proceed volume by volume, and is not suitable as an introductory general history.

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Reading tips

  1. Begin with the table of contents and the opening note to establish the volume's chronological span, then link it to the threads of the first two volumes.
  2. While reading, compile a table matching names, families, and city-states to ease the burden of dense proper nouns.
  3. Read alongside primary narratives such as Machiavelli's Florentine Histories, noting Sismondi's selections and judgments.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63

FAQ

Can this book be used without knowing Italian? The original is in Italian, and reading it directly without any foundation is quite difficult. First check whether an abridged translation or citations in relevant research exist before deciding whether to read selected portions with a dictionary and parallel materials; if only tracing historical clues, secondary research can also be used indirectly.
Why start reading from the third volume? The third volume is not the starting point of the whole work; its events and arguments carry on from the first two volumes. If beginning with this volume, it is advisable first to learn which city-states and periods the earlier volumes cover; otherwise the threads of persons and factions are easily broken. Systematic reading is still best pursued volume by volume in order.
What are the characteristics of this book's historiographical stance? Sismondi was both an economist and a historian; his narrative often attends to institutions, the economy, and social conditions, and carries a nineteenth-century liberal coloring in its judgment of the republican tradition. In reading, one should note his value judgments and keep them in dialogue with contemporary historiographical conclusions.

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About the author

Jean-Charles-Léonard Simonde de Sismondi Author · Swiss · 1773–1842

Jean-Charles-Léonard Simonde de Sismondi (1773–1842) was a Swiss economist and historian born in Geneva. He engaged in commerce in his early years before turning to scholarship. He is known for his multi-volume History of the Italian Republics of the Middle Ages, which narrates the political vicissitudes of the Italian republics century by century and exerted an intellectual influence on the Italian Risorgimento. In economics, he wrote New Principles of Political Economy, which criticized laissez-faire doctrine and advocated state intervention to safeguard the welfare of the people, earning him recognition as a representative figure of economic romanticism. His works combine careful historical scholarship with a critical, at times polemical, tone. The collection includes twelve of his works, mostly different volumes of the above-mentioned history.