Brothers of Liberty: Garibaldi's British Legion

Abstract

This article examines the enrollment of a brigade of armed volunteers which took place in Great Britain in summer 1860 to help the Italian patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi in southern Italy. Through the narrative strategies used to promote the enlistment and the images of the brigade that circulated in both Great Britain and Italy, it reveals features of a cosmopolitanism of nations and of a commitment based on transnational values spread in the nineteenth century. This article argues that the narratives used to mobilize men for a foreign cause not only shared values of freedom, justice, fraternity among nations, and a romantic appeal, but they had a strong national connotation. It was British pride in its freedom and constitution that gave the power and legitimacy to interfere in foreign affairs. Moreover, joining foreign causes strengthened a sentiment of British national pride and identity. The Legion's organizational and disciplinary problems also shed light on the biases and difficulties that troubled these kinds of expeditions and on the latent contradictions between a sense of patriotic duty, the transnational ideals that dominated the rhetoric, and the underlying disillusionment and frustration of the daily routine.