In most histories of what is often called the Age of Revolution specifically from the French
Revolution in 1789 to the Revolutions of 1848 Southern Europe is largely absent or plays to
say the least a very marginal role. This book is a new history of the revolutions of the early
1820s when the desire for freedom and emancipation found expression in uprisings in Portugal
Spain the Italian peninsula Sicily and Greece. While each of these revolutions had its
peculiar features and belonged at the same time to a global revolutionary South extending from
Latin America to Asia this book will highlight the converging features exchanges and
connections among them. The book explores practices and ideas that shaped these revolutions
such as the role played by secret societies elections the experience of war mobilization as
well as transnational circulation of information individuals and printed material in
politicizing new sectors of society. Maurizio Isabella challenges what he sees as enduring
notions of these revolutions as weak or elitist in nature and argues that while their fate was
determined by the intervention of more powerful foreign countries they actually enjoyed
considerable popular support in highly ideologically divided societies. The book then revises
our understanding of the Age of Revolution which until now is almost exclusively understood as
cantering around the North Atlantic and France and helps us to rethink the origins of
political modernity in Europe--
