Malta: a refuge for Italian exiles

Angela Picca: Pugliesi per l’Italia Unita, dalla Rivoluzione Partenopea (1799) a Porta Pia (1870) 2v Roma, L’Esagramma, 2012-2017 This is an attractive, very readable and nicely illustrated addition to the vast literature on the Italian Risorgimento. Angela Picca has taught in Italian upper secondary schools. As a researcher her interest has been in Italian history and in personalities such as the 18th century historian and jurist Pietro Giannone, about whom Picca published an unusual book in the form of a long drama with end-notes and many illustrations. The theatre is undoubtedly Picca’s great love. The present work is certainly not in a dramatic form, but Italian reviewers have commented on her bringing to life the personalities of many of the Apulian personalities of the Risorgimento in the first volume. I shall limit my comments to the second volume, bearing the subtitle ‘Sulle orme degli esuli’ and specifically to pages 352-439 dealing with the Apulian and other patriots who sought refuge in Malta where many of them continued to contribute to the Italian struggles for unification. Because of their geographical closeness to Italy, Greece and Malta were countries of refuge...