From Casati to Gentile, the Transversal Political Action to Form the Italian Citizen

The process of building the Unification of Italy started from the realisation that national cultural and political objectives had to be inculcated with specific teachings, aimed at transferring the feeling of love for the new homeland to children. «Italy was made, we must make Italians!» (Gigante, 2011, 5-15). Massimo D’Azeglio, imbued with Enlightenment culture, a common aspect of the political commitment of the Risorgimento, he emphasised that to achieve statehood required a strenuous path: “becoming Italian” reflected the new objective of the Savoy entourage, aware that Unity had been achieved from above and by force, with weapons and police coercion! The teachers in that period were mostly clerics who, although loyal to the sovereign, respected a hierarchy of values that did not correspond to the liberal ethics of the unifiers.