“Our Botany Bay”: The Political Prisoners of the Risorgimento and the Sentence of Deportation

Abstract

Deportation was a global phenomenon of the nineteenth century that developed through proliferation and imitation; it helped to populate entire regions while, at the same time, responding to the security needs of the various countries involved. In this article, I intend to place the case of the nineteenth-century Italian states in the context of international debates on deportation, stressing the twofold originality of the Italian case: the absence of colonial territories and the focus on political convicts. During the Restoration, the states in the Italian peninsula not only implemented this practice in territories lying outside their jurisdiction, through diplomatic agreements or unidirectional procedures, but also generally transported political detainees. During decades of political and social tensions, and of frequent insurrections, the transportation of political inmates offered governments the opportunity to get rid of their political opponents. Nonetheless, during those same decades, these political dissidents became the subject of debate and international comment thanks to the reconceptualization within liberal circles of political crime and the dynamics implicit in the practice of political punishment. The cases of deportation from the territories in the Italian peninsula highlight the role played by political convicts and the transnational mobilization created around their cases in the course of the nineteenth century. Focusing on foreign political prisoners not only implied a humanitarian awareness of individual suffering but inevitably also introduced reflections on foreign policy, forms of government, and the category and role of the political convict.