Historical-civil literature

Giuseppe Mannu - Letters from a Sardinian in Italy 1816-1817 - from Sardegna Digital Library

The interest of writers and intellectuals in the island was also expressed in relation to the reconstruction of the events of a “homeland”, Sardinia, which - although participating in the process of building the Italian nation - maintained its identity and its specificities. The desire to investigate and enhance the island's historical heritage became, especially from the beginning of the 19th century, prevalent in the aspirations of many scholars.
Among the pioneers in this regard, Domenico Alberto Azuni should be remembered, who with his “Histoire geographique, politique et naturelle du Royaume de Sardaigne” (1799) laid the foundations of historiographic research.
After the precious work of the bibliophile Lodovico Baille (1764-1802), came the fundamental work of Giuseppe Manno (1786-1868). An official loyal to the Savoy monarchy, an attentive historian and a non-despicable pen, Manno mixed these three elements in his works, strongly affecting the production of subsequent generations. He was highly appreciated by Italian intellectuality, so much so that his “History of Sardinia” was awarded by the Accademia della Crusca and praised by Capponi and Croce. His loyalty to the Savoy, however, led him to judgments that were too contemptuous of the events of the Sardinian revolutionary three-year period at the end of the 18th century.
Remarkable were the historiographical research carried out later by Pasquale Tola (1800-1874), Pietro Martini (1800-1866), Vittorio Angius (1798-1862) and Giovanni Siotto Pintor (1805-1882). The latter defined, in one of his famous works, 'collective madness' the renouncement of the formal autonomy of the island and the 'perfect merger' with the Piedmont of 1848.
According to Giovanni Pirodda, the second half of the 18th century was a period of historic acceleration for Sardinia. The revolutionary events of the last decade were the natural and in some ways inevitable consequence. The storm involved many of the intellectuals who had committed themselves in those years of aspirations to the rebirth or 'flourishing' of the island, according to an expression inspired by the work of the Jesuit Francesco Gemelli, 'Reblossoming of Sardinia'. The reformist impetus turned into a revolutionary roar and then subsided into a disillusioned ebb. After all, the Sardinian ruling class was beheaded by the repression ordered by the Piedmontese court which, for some time, was also forced to move from Turin to Cagliari.
The fruit of those troubled times are many works in the Sardinian language (“Procure 'e Moderate' by Francesco Ignazio Mannu among them all) but also the 'Autobiography' by Vincenzo Sulis (1758-1843), written in frontier Italian that never ceases to arouse great interest. After the repression and the “perfect fusion”, the Sardinian ruling class seems to renounce the Angioan nationalistic demands, and takes refuge in the suggestions of Giobertian federalism, Mazzini and Cattaneo.
Important personalities will be Giorgio Asproni (1808-1876) and Giovanni Battista Tuveri (1815-1887). The first, nicknamed the 'rebel canonic', contested Italian unification, while the second advocated a democratic, autonomist and federalist vision in his 'On the Right of Man to the Destruction of Bad Governments', published in 1851.

MONOGRAPHS
P. Martini, Storia di Sardegna dall'anno 1799 al 1816, a cura di A. Accardo. Nuoro, Ilisso, 1999 (Bibliotheca Sarda; 48;
G. Manno, De' vizi de' letterati, a cura di D. Della Terza. Nuoro, Ilisso, 2002 (Bibliotheca Sarda; 81).

Update

23/6/2026 - 16:01