Passage to Modernity: Thinking Theoretically About the Experience of France, Italy and Spain

Abstract

"It is hard to imagine many countries so similar and dissimilar - at times amici/nemici all at once - as France, Italy and Spain. In addition to physical proximity and characteristics, they share common linguistic and cultural roots, have for the most part genuflected at the same altar, and assimilated, emulated and, at times, sought to avoid each another's customs, institutions and ways of life. The movement of ideas, people and goods between them, seldom severed for long, proceeded over the centuries through mutual consent, rivalry, imitation, alliance, dynastic or territorial aggrandizement and force. The network of relations became more fixed, but no less complex to understand, with the Enlightenment, the French Revolution and their respective reverberations. Just consider."