Foreign Policy: Memoirs and Documents

Crispi, Francesco, 1818-1901Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.2

Word count: 793K words
Chapters: 80

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.Politica estera: memorie e documenti by Francesco CrispiAuthor: Crispi, Francesco, 1818-1901,Language: Italian, Class: DG: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Italy, Vatican City, Malta, Release Date: Jan 11, 2013

Editor's review

This book is a memoir-and-document compilation of the foreign policy of the Italian statesman Francesco Crispi, published as a public-domain historical-source e-book. Crispi served twice as Prime Minister of Italy; his diplomatic activity spanned post-unification colonial expansion, maneuvering among the European great powers, and domestic political bargaining. By placing memoir narrative alongside original documents, the book presents the decision-making process and holds value as primary material for studying the course of Italian foreign policy at the end of the nineteenth century. The original is in Italian, and the narrative carries a defensive, self-justifying tone; readers should keep the author's stance in mind. It is suitable as supplementary material for courses on modern European international-relations history and the history of Italian unification, and can also be read selectively by those interested in colonial-era diplomatic papers. Readers are advised to first familiarize themselves with the major events of Crispi's time in office, then read the relevant documents by theme.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Scholars and graduate students researching the history of Italian diplomacy at the end of the nineteenth century
Undergraduates taking modern European international-relations history who need access to primary documents
Readers with Italian who are interested in politicians' memoirs and archival papers
History enthusiasts concerned with the issue of colonial expansion after Italian unification

Not a good fit for

General readers unfamiliar with Italian who have no translation available
Beginners expecting a systematic general-history narrative rather than a compilation of original documents

Reading tips

Read the table of contents and the editor's introduction first, select chapters by diplomatic-event theme, and do not feel obliged to read every page
While reading, consult a timeline of major events after Italian unification, marking key figures and treaties
Read the memoir passages and the appended documents separately, comparing the author's narrative with the primary materials

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.

FAQ

Can I read this book without knowing Italian?

The original is in Italian, and the public-domain e-edition includes no Chinese translation. Without Italian, reading is considerably difficult; it is advisable to first consult relevant Chinese- or English-language studies of Crispi's foreign policy, then decide whether to read selected documents with the help of a dictionary.

Is this book a complete general history of diplomacy?

No. It is compiled from Crispi's memoirs and documents and carries a personal, selective perspective, focusing on the diplomatic decisions the author personally experienced rather than offering a systematic general history. Readers should treat it as historical source material and use it alongside general histories and other scholars' research.

Are there suggested methods for reading a document compilation?

You can first classify the documents by time or by country and create a brief index; for each document, record the sender, recipient, date, and core demand. This reduces the sense of fragmentation and makes later checking and citation easier.

Comments

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About the author

Crispi, Francesco, 1818-1901 Author · Italian · 1818–1901

Francesco Crispi (1818–1901) was an Italian politician who served twice as prime minister and was an important figure in the Italian unification movement. Two of his works are included here: Politica estera: memorie e documenti and Garibaldi. Judging from its title, the former is a collection of memoirs and documents on foreign policy, while the latter focuses on Garibaldi. His writing therefore centers on his own political experience, diplomatic affairs, and figures of the unification movement, and has a clear character of documentary compilation and personal recollection. Because public information is limited, his early education, specific offices, and the full range of his writings cannot be verified, so this introduction does not expand on them; readers may turn to the two works mentioned above to understand how this political figure took part in and reviewed the history of Italian unification and foreign policy through documents and biographical accounts.