Unifying Europe

Altiero Spinelli (1907-86) began calling for a European federation in the mid-20th century; he was carrying on a legacy of a circle of radical 19th-century Italian political activists who were the first to think seriously about a political project of a ‘United States of Europe’. These Italian radicals envisioned a democratic political project aiming at the freedom and solidarity of all European peoples.  For example, Italian republican Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-72) called for a ‘Europe of the peoples’, rather than the ‘Europe of the crowned heads’.   The self-governing polis: ‘municipal order, laws and dignity for citizens’ are at the core of Carlo Cattaneo's (1801-69) idea of the ‘Europe of the cities’. Cattaneo re-described the ideal of European civilisation, filtering it through a concept of the city and its characteristic institutions as the primary form of political organisation.

Over the past century and a half, political visions of the European future have been deeply shaped by the networks of emissaries, exiles and intellectuals participating in national movements across Europe. This was important, because feeling European was not a straightforward matter for patriots caught in bitter and often violent struggles for unity and independence. It was precisely the failure of those struggles in the first instance that fed the exile networks, promoting the trans-European exchange of ideas and experiences that would generate innovative understandings of European unity.