Milan riots of 1853: history and remembrance

ABSTRACT The article recounts the revolt that took place in Milan on 6 February 1853 and investigates its presence in the official memory of the city. The main figures in the rebellion were from Milan’s working class: while the movement was fomented by Mazzini, it was carried out independently by badly organized groups of workers; unlike the ‘Cinque Giornate’ of 1848, the upper classes were not involved. Barricades were erected and Austrian soldiers were killed, but order was promptly restored by the Austrians. The occupying forces arrested hundreds of people, executed sixteen working-class men and ordered the seizure of the goods of exiles who had left Lombardy after 1848. The article looks at how the events of 1853 were treated by historiography and local commemoration from unification to the present day. It discusses the meaning of the inclusion of that failed, impracticable uprising – a divisive one, involving as it did only figures from the lower classes – in the official justification of the city’s heroism, sanctioned in 1948 when Milan was awarded the gold medal for military valour.